


Hitmanstuck

by SirJoshizzle



Category: Homestuck, MS Paint Adventures
Genre: Action/Adventure, Adventure, Alternate Reality, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Dark, Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No Sburb Session, Assassins & Hitmen, Crime Fighting, Crimes & Criminals, Drama, F/M, Gen, Humor, M/M, Organized Crime, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-05-19
Updated: 2012-08-29
Packaged: 2017-11-05 15:00:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 23,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/407789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SirJoshizzle/pseuds/SirJoshizzle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It seemed that in Terranos, a city overrun with opulence, flamboyance, corruption, and rampant crime, everyone moonlit as a hitman. Assassins dressed in finely tailored suits and dresses stealthily carrying out their clients' deadly wishes. Men and women, teenagers, even children—they were all the same. One such John Egbert, a seemingly unsuspecting prep school student and the teenage son of a wealthy businessman, was a testament to that. But what was wrong with that? Everyone had their reasons for killing. AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Make Me Proud

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This more or less (actually, quite all) the product of my friends' and my wild imaginations. The influences we all drew from to create this AU are based on Battle Royale, The Hunger Games, Grand Theft Auto and Saints Row: The Third.
> 
> For the creation of the universe on which is story is based on, I have to attribute that to my very close friend BLACKOUTBALLAD DOT TUMBLR DOT COM, who I'm working very closely with to develop this. As an AU, this borrow heavily from the Homestuck canon, of course, with some lovingly inventive artistic licenses I'm hoping you all will enjoy (ie, the trolls all make appearances, but for the sake of this story they are all humans).
> 
> I do not own Homestuck, and again, the Hitmanstuck AU on which this is based belongs to BLACKOUTBALLAD DOT TUMBLR DOT COM.

_To be a hitman was to kill. That was it. We could have whatever motives we wanted—to protect, for a greater sense of justice, or for the mere sake of killing—the bottom line was that we were all killers. We were all guilty of taking the lives of another. I could never speak for another, but personally, the thought of how many people I killed throughout my life was sickening. Hardly any room for regrets now, though. I had the blood of countless people on my hands. We all did._

_We were killers. I was a killer._

_To be a hitman, it was to kill._

**...**

_Alleyway, Gold Fortune District  
Sunday, May 13—11:36 PM _

_"Make me proud."_

The words of seventeen year old John Egbert's mentor rung in his head as he approached his target, his blue and silver hammer brandished and at the ready. His target, a man who looked like he was in his late thirties, lay on the ground, already badly bruised and cut. His wispy gray hair was matte with his blood from a wound near the crown of his head the boy had inflicted on him in their earlier scuffle. John had managed to back him into a dark alley, with only the quarter moon as their source of illumination. The older man had inflicted a few bruises on him as well, including a bit of a bloody nose, but none were nearly as bad as what the boy had been able to inflict. The years he spent training leading up to this moment had surely paid off.

"Finish him," a voice said behind John. He briefly looked over his shoulder to another man watching him with a knowing smirk. The man, who was much taller than he—maybe a good head taller, leaned against the building. One of his legs was propped up, foot against the wall, and his arms were crossed over his broad chest. One hand held one of his dual pistols, safety off and ready to fire at any time should something with his young mentee go wrong; and the other held a freshly lit cigarette between his index and middle finger. Twenty-two year old Jake English took a long drag from his cigarette and breathed out the smoke softly before repeating his words to John. "Make me proud."

John nodded slightly and turned back to his prey. The man clutched the gunshot wound to his bicep, trying in vain to stop the bleeding. His eyes squinted at the boy through the blood that dripped down his forehead, his vision blurry from an oncoming concussion. That would be fixed soon enough. Going comatose would be the least of his worries.

"Come on then," the man spat at him, a bit of blood coughing out and dripping down the side of his mouth as he did so. "Get it fuckin' over with already!"

John just stared at him hard, his grip on the cushioned handle of his hammer tightening some. Not even gonna beg for mercy? Come on, now! That's no fun! Well, if the man wasn't going to let him have a good time—especially on his first job, he might as well make the most of it.

Lifting the large hammer with practiced ease, he swung it with all his might into the side of the man's head. The bloodied man let out his last grunt of pain before slamming against the wall and falling to the ground like an abandoned rag doll. If the sheer blunt force hadn't killed him, then the unnatural snapping sound coming from his neck surely would have. But that wasn't enough for John. He walked over to the now dead man and, lifting his hammer again, repeatedly stuck him into the corner of the alleyway.

Jake watched it all unravel from near the entrance to the alley. He couldn't help but let out a chuckle as he did so. Kid sure was eager.

"All right!" Jake finally called out to him. John stopped his onslaught at the sound of his mentor's voice, his footsteps drawing closer to him. "That's quite enough of that, young lad!" He eyed the mangled mess of a body in the corner for a quick second. Anyone would have certainly lost more than a meal at the sight, but not Jake English. Oh, he'd seen much worse.

"…Might have actually overdone it a bit," he chuckled again. He took the pistol in his hand, making sure the suppressor was on tight, and fired two more shots into the man's abdomen, just for good measure. It was a signature of sorts that he left on any hit that he was associated with.

"How was that!" John asked him in a hurried voice, brimming with excitement. The older of the two looked down at him. Some blood stained the lens of the boy's glasses, and Jake gingerly licked his thumb and wiped a few of the spots off clean.

"You did well, lad," he beamed at him, ruffling his shaggy black hair. "Not bad for your first hit."

John just nodded with a toothy grin, wiping the blood dripping from his nose with his fist. Jake reached into his back pocket for his handkerchief and handed it to him to wipe his nose clean. No gentleman was without a handkerchief. It was one of his rules.

Jake reached into his other pocket for his digital camera and, turning it on, aimed it at the body and snapped a picture, the flash blinding him for a moment.

The man's crime was the rape of a shopkeeper's fifteen year old daughter. It had happened behind a strip club in one of the poorer neighborhoods in the city's industrial districts where she worked—illegally and obviously underage mind you, contrary to the what she told her father she was doing every Friday night—sleeping over at her best friend's house. The job had never been much of a problem before, but unfortunately for her one night one of her clients didn't understand the "no touching" rule. From there, the situation turned very ugly very quickly.

One of the quirks of the city's law enforcement system was that each of the city's five districts had police forces that were almost autonomous of each other despite the entire system overseeing the same city. It wasn't the place of one district's police force to interfere with the crime happenings in another, and although the girl lived in a wealthier district, the crime had occurred in another. She had reported the incident to the local authorities, but seeing as how law enforcement was comparatively more lax and less funded in the poorer areas of the city, the officers couldn't—or more like  _wouldn't_  do much for her.

That was when she turned to her father and admitted to him her shameful moonlighting. Of course he was upset… On second thought, "upset" didn't quite begin to describe his initial reaction. But his baby girl had been violated, robbed of her innocence (although one would argue that she had given in that innocence long before the incident). And no self-respecting father would just stand idly by and let such a heinous act happen to his daughter.

The man had approached Jake about the situation the week before. Normally Jake didn't take cases for such little money; a gentleman had to pay his rent, and no gentleman would ever trifle with pocket change in exchange for his services. But this one time he made an exception, if only because how much the man pleaded with him to take the case. He had his former partner, John's older half-sister, track the man down for him; she was infamous in hitmen circles for her skills in logistics. And John, poor John had been bugging him for the longest time over when he would finally get his chance at a case rather than just watching and observing. The man, according to the information she had given Jake, seemed easy enough for the young lad to take on by himself. Little did he know just how easily he would fall.

**…**

"My first hit!" John exclaimed, brimming with joy. Jake just laughed at him from the driver's seat of his dark green sports car as he sped down the spacious and empty avenue, typical for a late Sunday night. "When do you think we'll be getting the next contract!"

" _Easy_  there, my boy," the older one smiled. "Don't get your knickers bunched in too tightly!" He admired the boy's enthusiasm, but it tended to wear even him out pretty quickly. "We'll procure the next contract when it comes our way, so you just sit nice and pretty till then, yeah?"

John just nodded a bit before calming himself down and turned back to the scenery rushing by before him. "…Thanks again for letting me take care of that one back there, Jake."

Jake glanced over to him, but smiled warmly and reached over to ruffle his hair some. "You seemed ready enough, and you handled the old man well… I'm just relieved we were able to get him so early in the evening. You have school tomorrow, don't you?"

"It's fine!" John exclaimed, trying to mask a bit of a groan. "Nothing's happening at school anyway, so it's not like I'm going to miss something."

That just earned him a lopsided smile and slightly raised eyebrow from Jake, who scratched his medium length black hair as he did so. "I don't think your sister would be all too pleased to hear you say that." That was a bit of an understatement, actually; his sister wouldn't be too happy with what John was doing at all.

John just rolled his eyes a bit at that. "Well I'm safe, aren't I? You're always worrying about her… What, did something happen between you two?"

"W-what?" Jake began to press down on the brake at the oncoming red light, but the boy's question had thrown him off so much he accidentally stepped a little bit too roughly, causing the two to jerk forward a bit against their seatbelts.

John cocked an eyebrow at his sudden reaction, rubbing his neck a bit where the seatbelt roughly rubbed against his skin. "You two were partners before, right?"

Jake just looked out the window with a nervous smile at that, reaching into his back pocket for his pack of cigarettes. "Y-yeah, we were. Back when we were in high school."

His answer didn't quite convince the teen; he knew Jake was hiding something else. "…And?"

"And… that's it," Jake chuckled with a shrug, hoping John wouldn't press any further on the topic. He grabbed his lighter from the small recessed compartment under the radio controls and lit his cigarette. Luckily for him, John decided to just let up; he knew Jake could be rather tight-lipped when he wanted to be. He just watched the streetlights before him turn green, and Jake sped off forward where the street eventually turned into the on-ramp to one of the city's many highways.

The city was named Terranos, and to anyone from the outside, seemed shrouded in an enigma far thicker than any of the region's seasonal fog. Nestled on the coast of the deep, island-littered Grand Hussie Sound that protected it from the Pacific Ocean, and surrounded on its northern, eastern and southern borders by thick evergreen forests that extended into the foothills of the not too distant mountains; its geography almost effectively isolated it from the rest of the country. The closest city to it, Vancouver to the north, was about an hour north past the Canadian border; the closest major American city to it was San Francisco, and that already was a good day and a half or so by car. Terranos dwarfed both of them in terms of size and population, and was by far claimed the title of both superlatives in the Pacific Northwest. How a city so isolated grew so large just added to the mystique that surrounded Terranos.

Terranos's city proper population of six million was broken into five administrative districts, the two largest and most urban being at the nucleus of the city next to the water; the other three surrounded them and as such diffused into much less dense and more suburban areas. A wide, deep river that started in the high mountains and emptied into Grand Hussie Sound bisected the city horizontally, with those two major districts on either side of the river. John and Jake's home, Gold Fortune District, was on the northern end. The other, the Veilchen Borough, occupied the south.

The Gold Fortune District, or "the Fortune District" or "The Fortune," as it was known colloquially, more than lived up to its name. It was by far the largest and wealthiest of the five districts, as would one expect what with it being the seat of the city's central government, administrative departments, and home to the headquarters of some of the country's and the world's most powerful companies. It overflowed with wealth, and its residents lived in opulence, almost at the expense of the other four wards:

With such wealth, of course, came corruption of equal proportions; and just because the district seemed so idyllic on paper didn't mean it was exempt from such a fact of life. As stated, money—not the people, ran civic affairs in the Fortune District. The Fortune was able to thrive so fabulously  _because_  almost everything was privately funded, from healthcare to education to even the police and fire departments. Public funds—of which there was a disproportionate amount of for a city of Terranos' size, were mostly allocated to the rest of the city; The Fortune could do famously without a cent of any of it.

As such, crime became rampant in Terranos, even in the Fortune District, and it wasn't even necessarily just government corruption or petty crimes—although there was much of that, very seldom were perpetrators apprehended and convicted for their wrongdoings (such things only happened to amateurs, and the criminals of Terranos were certainly no amateurs). Violent murder, extortion, grand larceny—you could name it all until you were blue in the face and it would do more justice to describe the especially rougher parts of Terranos than "wealthy" or "cosmopolitan" did. Crime had become such a common occurrence in the city over the years that the local news didn't even bother to update the public on it anymore. What was another person found dead in an alleyway or a businessman filing for bankruptcy due to blackmail at that point?

It went without saying that the police force in the city had more than their fair share of work cut out for them. It didn't help that each district also handled criminal affairs independently of each other. That's where hitmen such as Jake and John came in. With formal law enforcement so enfeebled by the lack of cohesion in the system and the mounting logs of reported cases, it was a commonality for people—if they could pay the right price, to hire such mercenaries to bring their trespassers to justice and vicariously through them exact their revenge. In a city like Terranos, _anyone_  could have been a hitman, and everyone had their reasons for being. One such John Egbert, the teenaged son of a wealthy businessman and a seemingly unsuspecting prep school student, was a testament to that. The entire city seemed in an unstoppable downward spiral of crime and excess that all surely took issue with yet did nothing to stop. That was the enigma. A city in which money alone talked and assassins in finely tailored suits and dresses carried out their clients' deadly wishes. That was Terranos.

* * *

_Egbert Residence, Gold Fortune District  
Monday, May 14—12:34 AM _

John shook off his light blue Converses as he slipped through the entrance to his family's high rise penthouse. As he held them in his hand by their tongues, he checked the bottom of his shoes; they were stained with a bit of blood, having stepped in some of the man's earlier in the alley. He also got some smeared blood stains on his matching blue waist coat and black dress shirt. Luckily for him, his father was off on a business conference in New York and his returning flight wasn't due for the next morning. His father was the CEO of the BC Corporation, one the world's leading manufacturers in instant food mixes and confectioneries.

"John?"

A feminine voice called his name. It was his sister… What was she doing home?

From the second floor, he saw his half-sister come out of the hallway and run down the staircase that curved along the concave wall.

Twenty-one year old Jane Crocker was the heiress apparent to the BC fortune. She and John were half-siblings due to having different mothers: Jane's biological mother was the former CEO of BC, her and John's father having married into the family but retained his last name Egbert. Her mother died when Jane was three—her limousine crashed, the driver having secretly been an agent who was sent to take her life, and successfully did so in that suicide mission. There have been decade-long accusations of BC participating in underground business operations to eliminate their competition to monopolize the food manufacturing market, and her mother unfortunately had been the victim of other companies trying to usurp BC's monopoly.

Her father eventually remarried a woman who eventually went on to give birth to John (who took his last name; Jane retained the Crocker name), but he divorced her when John was nine and Jane was thirteen. Because their father was not part of the direct BC bloodline, he had no direct control over the company's fortune and thus John's mother received virtually nothing in the divorce settlement; she ultimately faded into obscurity and their father went on to raise John and Jane alone. Because of family traditions that they had no intention of abandoning even in spite of Jane's mother's untimely death, Jane was the technical owner of BC upon her mother's death. However, her she was far too young to directly inherit it, having been only a toddler at the time, so her father took over the company in her stead. She was set to become the formal CEO upon her 25th birthday.

"What happened!" She cried out, rushing over him and thumbing the blood on his clothes. "You're not injured, are you?"

"Just some cuts and bruises," the boy shrugged, setting down his hammer and leaning it against the wall.

"Jake texted me; he told me what you two were doing… He didn't let you get hurt or anything, did he?" She eyed him suspiciously as if he himself were Jake.

"No, no," he shook his head. He brushed his older sister's hands off her, telling her he was fine. "But he did let me take on my first hit! It was so cool, you should have been there!'

Jane just kind of shook her head disapprovingly at that, but she playfully poked the middle of his forehead and walked off into the kitchen. "I'll take your word for it."

He rubbed his forehead a bit, returning the gesture with an equally playful scoff before following her.

"But you know, you're just lucky that Dad isn't home to see you." She chastised as she opened the fridge to get two bottles of water for him and her.

"You're one to talk," he smirked smartly as he sat at the large granite breakfast nook. She just cocked an eyebrow at him as she slid the bottle across the countertop into his hand. They both kept from their father their business as hitmen, naturally. They weren't so much worried about what he would do to them directly if he should find out, but how it would affect him personally; Dad Egbert had a history of a rather weak heart, and there had been enough tragedy in the family as it already stood.

"…Well as long as you're okay," she smiled a bit, facing him from the other side of the nook, taking a few swigs from her water and leaning on the ornate countertop as she did so. "What was the case tonight?"

"Hm?" John looked up at her, eyebrows raised. She just cheekily raised her own brow in response, silently drinking her water. "Oh, some guy raped someone's daughter. Jake was going to take care of it and I was just going to observe again, but when he shot the guy in the arm, he let me finish the job."

"That so?" Jane asked somewhat rhetorically. "That must have been the case me asked me to get that intel on… How's that doofus been taking care of you, by the way? Better not be putting you in any bad situations."

"Everything's fine!" He drew out with a bit of a groan. God, she could be so overprotective! "Jake's fine too. I hang out at his place sometimes. He feeds me, I pull a prank or two when he's not looking—you know, the usual."

Jane couldn't help but laugh at that. Capping her water bottle, she pushed herself off against the counter and turned around to the sink behind her. "'Usual' is right."

She had always attributed it to the fact that John always seemed a bit lonely as he got older, especially when she started becoming a little more missing-in-action due to school and her undercover hitman workings (at least until John found out about them); but so as to create some form of amusement for himself, John developed a bit of a penchant for messing around with people. He tended to do it particularly to their father's business associates when they were over for conference dinners and meetings, or to the help around the house whenever they were in to work. Or to Jake. Especially Jake.

"How about you, by the way?" John asked her as she turned on the water to clean up the dishes in the sink. "What are you doing home?"

"My roommate's parents are in town visiting," she replied as she squirted a liberal amount of dish soap onto the sponge in her hand. "They're staying over for the night, and I thought I should give them a little space. So don't worry; your big sis'll be out of your hair in the morning."

He tilted his head to the side a bit, a sheepish smile directed at the back of her head. "I didn't mean it like that."

Jane unhooked the hose at the sink and swiftly aimed it at her little brother, her finger poised on its trigger and ready to shoot water at him. He awkwardly flinched backwards in his seat at that, almost falling off the stool, but she just playfully made a shooting gesture with the nozzle, as if it were a pistol, and made a squeaking "Bang!"

John, only just slightly irritated by her antics, poured a bit of water from his bottle onto his hands, not caring about the puddle he was making on the counter. As soon as Jane turned back around to the sink, he splattered the liquid on his fingertips at her hair. "What the hell!"

She gasped at the cold contact on her neck and bare shoulders, having been clad in just a tank top and shorts, and whirled around to glare at his snickering face, her jaw open. "Wow, at least I didn't actually do anything to you!" She snapped at him, wielding the nozzle again. "You little brat!"

"God!" She heaved, spraying the bubbles off a plate. John just snickered teasingly at her, wiping his hands and the counter clean with the long coattails of his vest. As they fell into silence, John thought of how Jane held the hose nozzle like it was pistol, and it brought Jake to mind.

She and Jake had been partners since at least when he first found out that she was a hitman; that was maybe around her third year in high school when he was thirteen. They went their separate ways sometime while she and Jake were in college, but they maintained their friendship even after parting. John didn't know all that much about their relationship other than the fact it usually consisted of Jake not taking things as seriously as she would have liked him to and scolding him because of it.

…Come to think of it, Jane almost always chastised him on everything, even on things that seemed so miniscule. And Jake, well he was… He was just Jake. He'd tease and poke at her, almost the same way John did, although for some reason Jane never found it nearly as cute or endearing when it came from her former hit partner. Or whenever Jake spoke in a little of an old-timey 1920s slang and slipped into a bit of a fake, badly imitated British accent, she would just roll his eyes at him and tell him to shut up. John only formally met Jake when he was 15 and Jake was 20, when Jake offered to take him under his wing after he came back from a year of study abroad in London. Jake had some naïve and so stereotypically American idea that all people in England actually talked like that, and started reading up on 1920s colloquialisms "to fit in." Whether he actually did or not was anyone's guess, but it apparently became such a habit for him that it just stuck, even after he moved back to the States.

"Hey, Jane," John spoke after a little bit.

"Yeah?"

"What's up with you and Jake?" He asked her. Jane paused for a bit, not turning to face her brother, before continuing washing the dishes.

"What do you mean?" She asked calmly.

"I mean, do you not like him?" He asked again, scratching his cheek with his index finger a bit.

"…He's my friend," she replied coolly, almost as if trying to dodge the question. She pulled open the dish washer and slid out one of the racks to place the plate that she held in. "Why do you ask?"

"I dunno," he shrugged. "I mean I know you two were partners back in high school, but why aren't you two working together anymore?"

"…Things…" She started slowly, as if trying to find the right way to describe it. "…Things didn't work out. I wanted to work one way, he wanted to work another… You know how that is, right? I mean… It was just so long ago, I hardly even remember exactly why anymore."

He cocked an eyebrow at that. "…It was just five years ago."

"After you turn twenty, John," she chuckled, "anything before then's just a bit of a blur."

John just nodded silently, scratching his head a bit. He didn't pull nearly as much information from her concerning the matter as he wanted; but as much as he wanted to know, he didn't want to press her on the matter. Her business was her business: the law of the sister, as he always saw it. If he couldn't ask her, then maybe he'd try asking Jake again the next time he saw him.

The grandfather clock from the living room chimed then. It was one in the morning.

"It's late," Jane spoke, rinsing out a coffee mug. "Come on, go get washed up for bed. You got school in the morning."

"I know," he breathed a bit begrudgingly, hopping off the stool and dusting himself off.

"I'll take you to school when you wake up," she said as she turned around to smile at him. John just returned it warmly before walking out of the kitchen.

"G'night!" He called out to her, not turning to face her.

"Good night, John," she replied, turning the faucet off and shaking the water off her hands.

* * *

_Maple Valley Preparatory School, Gold Fortune District  
Monday, May 14—7:45 AM _

John knew he shouldn't have come to school.

The teen made no effort to yawn with even just the slightest bit of discretion as he took a small step forward down one of the side aisles of Maple Valley Preparatory School's auditorium, waiting for the long line of students before him to finally shuffle into the numerous rows of seats.

"This is so pointless," John muttered under his breath as he took another step down the aisle of the amphitheater, lecture hall styled room. It was that time of the month for what the school called "town meetings." What they were, were essentially just run-of-the-mill school assemblies with a fancy name tacked onto them in true Gold Fortune District private school style. It was the monthly opportunity for administration, student government, and clubs to all come together to put on an hour-long dazzling spectacle of campus happenings, policy reinforcement, and sloppily rehearsed performances that never failed to spectacularly bore the entire school to sleep. He personally didn't know why they didn't just call them what they were; maybe it was to create a sense of camaraderie among the students, that a school was a community of scholars-in-training carrying the torch of the sacred institution that was education… or some shit like that. Not that John particularly cared as to why exactly either way.

As he scanned the crowd, someone in particular caught his eye. It was actually a bit hard to miss; the person stuck out like a sore thumb amongst the students around them, who were all talking and laughing. One of the girls around the the body covered by the uniform blazer pulled the jacket off them, revealing a headful of long, thick black hair resting on the seat's fold-out desk and cradled into folded arms. Who John assumed to be the person's friend playfully knocked her fist against the sleeping head. The head shot up at that, her round-shaped glasses crooked on her face. It was a girl, probably the same age as John.

"Sleeping again?" The girl's friend scoffed with a teasing laugh as she gave the girl her blazer back.

"Y-yeah!" She giggled, fixing her hair and putting her blazer back on. "Sorry about that… What were you saying again?"

John just chuckled at her. He had seen her around many times on campus before, but he never actually talked to her or even bothered to learn her name. Despite that, the only reason he remembered her so vividly—which was something to be said, considering how bad John was with remembering faces, was that almost every time he saw her, she was sleeping. She slept in the library when he was studying. She slept on a bench in the quad during lunch. She slept at the freakin' Homecoming football game—and she sat right next to the marching band! What, did the girl never sleep at home or something? And God, what was her name? It was on the tip of his tongue… What was it again, Harlot-something?

"Hey, dumbass!" An abrasive voice shouted behind him, snapping him out of his thoughts. "Pay the fuck attention!"

John whirled around behind him and saw his friend, Karkat Vantas, glaring up at him and point over the teen's shoulder. "You're holding the rest of us up!"

John faced forward again and saw that the line in front of him had moved quite a few steps forward. Blushing a bit, John hurriedly caught up with them, apologizing to Karkat as he did so. "Sorry about that."

"What were you thinking about, anyway?" The shorter albino teen cocked an eyebrow at him, folding his arms over his chest.

"N-nothing," John shook his head, smiling at his friend. Despite them being in the same grade and John being a year younger, Karkat was quite the shorter of the two, almost reaching up to John's chin. His platinum blond hair was a bit messy, almost like John's but not quite as thick. The most striking features about him, though, were his ruby red eyes framed by his somewhat natural eye bags, which almost seemed to glow in stark contrast with his pale skin.

Finally, it was John's turn to file into a row. As he followed the male student in front of him down to an available seat, he watched from the corner of his eye the thick-haired brunette. Sure enough, she was passed out again, soundly asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So ends chapter one! I hope you enjoyed this much so far. Some closing notes: Terranos and its geographic location are based largely on Seattle and the Puget Sound, but you know how AUs go, haha. The United States I'd say is rather dystopian, but as I see it now that won't be explored too thoroughly and much if not all action will be set in Terranos.
> 
> Also, while you wait for future updates, I strongly suggest that if you have a Tumblr account, that you follow blackoutballad and support her art! Also, she has a dedicated Tumblr to the Hitmanstuck universe, which you can follow at HITMANSTUCK DOT TUMBLR DOT COM. She has a lot of background information on the canon and she actually has character designs out that she created (as of this publishing, the designs and bios for John, Jake, Jane, Jade, Dave, Dirk, Rose, Roxy, Karkat and Terezi are up). I think those will be particularly helpful in imagining the trolls, since I think I threw you all for a loop when I described Karkat as albino, haha. Lastly, you can hit me up at KIMJONGHEALTHY DOT TUMBLR DOT COM
> 
> Constructive feedback and comments are, of course, greatly appreciated! :]


	2. Wild and Poised

_Club Turntech, Veilchen Borough_   
_Thursday, May 17—11:12 PM_

"What the hell kind of song is this!"

A very loud and very inebriated blonde woman, no older than her mid-twenties maybe, slightly tripped over some cables and made her way over to the turntables at the end of the crowded nightclub, a tall shot glass half-filled with vodka in one hand and her clutch wallet in the other. Her light blue eyes were finely glazed over; she clearly had more than her fair share of alcohol.

Twenty-three year old Dirk Strider just cocked an eyebrow at the woman at his side, quite bitter for a second that her intrusion almost messed up the rhythm he set on scratching the record his hand rested on.

"It's  _music_ ," he shot back sarcastically, emphasizing the word to her as if it were something foreign.

"I  _know_ that," she scoffed, rolling her neck at him. "But I can't work to this! Play something else!"

"Because  _everything_ revolves around you, Roxy," he said bluntly as he turned back to one of his monitors.

The woman, twenty-one year old Roxy Lalonde, just grimaced at him. Oh no, she was far too drunk and far too irritated to take his attitude. She just clumsily swatted his arm, and he flinched and glared at her through his large, pointed shades.

"The fuck?" He cocked a brow at her.

"Play. A different. Song!"

But he didn't do anything; instead he just casually shrugged her off after a short pause and took a sip of his apple martini. "Not my target, Roxy. Not my problem."

That was nowhere near what she wanted to hear.

"Maybe it isn't my playlist's fault," he said calmly, turning to her. "Maybe you're just losing your touch."

That was the last straw for her. "The  _fuck_ I am!" She indignantly downed the last half of her vodka and slammed the shot glass down on one of the waist-high speakers. The glass flimsily rattled against the booming bass gradually towards the edge before unceremoniously falling to the ground with a shatter that, in comparison to the screaming of the crowds and the wall-shaking thumping of Dirk's dance music, might as well have been silent.

"We'll show you, Mr. Strider," she teased in a sing-song voice as she pressed her index finger to his lips, and stepped down from his platform and back into the crowd with such elegance that betrayed her sheer alcohol intake. Dirk just watched her disappear into the sea of people with a small chuckle and a shake of his head. Same old Roxy.

Roxy eased her way through the crowd in as much time to the music as she could manage. The music Dirk chose to play right then really wasn't her proverbial shot of bourbon, but the crowd on the dance floor seemed to compensate for that. They all moved in one fluid motion to the rhythm. She dipped when she was supposed to, and gave a few anonymous faces the pleasure of a little gyrating of her hips against them for good measure. Their heads would turn in her direction, blushing as they tried to find the culprit, and Roxy knew fully well the blushing wasn't the alcohol. She would just giggle to herself and shoot them a playful smirk, and she could swear she could hear their knees buckle over the music.  _Of course_ they would. Any less of a reaction would be an insult.

"Baby!" She felt someone tap her on her bare shoulder from behind, and she turned around from where she had been grinding against some girl to see the man she had been toying with for a past half hour.

'Baby?'  _Really?_ What was he, some lovesick schoolboy? But it was okay, she could forgive him for such a vapid term of endearment. He was good looking after all, and Roxy Lalonde's number one rule was that the good looking ones always got it easier.

Too bad his time was almost up, and luckily for her, playtime had just barely begun.

"There you are!" He laughed. He leaned over and kissed her on her lips gingerly. It was such a shame; the boy was even a good kisser to boot.

"Here I am!" She giggled again, doing a little curtsy and flashing a bright smile that made her white teeth glow against the club's blacklights. She waved a gloved hand, wiggling her fingers as she did so.

"Here," the man handed her a sparkling margarita. "On me, of course!"

"Aw, look at you!" She laughed, taking the glass. He reached behind him over to the bar and grabbed his own margarita. With a toast, they downed their drinks with such swiftness that it would make an onlooker feel tipsy just from watching. They had been playing a little game of who could finish their drinks the quickest since they met. Naturally, Roxy had been winning the entire night.

The man looked like he was in his late twenties. His short black hair was slicked back and his sharp eyebrows seemed to always be in a bit of a smarm. His goatee was so finely kempt and lined up it almost irritated her, like she wanted to take a razor and shave it off herself. The collar of his dress shirt was popped and his necktie the top few buttons undone, revealing a bit of what was sure to be a well-sculpted chest. Poor guy. It really was such a shame. He had been nice company, and an even nicer source of free shots. But everyone had an expiration date. A toy could only please for so long. His time was up.

"Say," she giggled, feigning a little hiccup. He seemed like the kind of guy to like a girl past her limit. "Would you like to… you know, go to 'the back'?"

The man looked at her for a second, a little caught off guard by the question. Was she serious?

"A-are you sure?" He asked her. Wow, was it getting hot all of a sudden?

"You don't want to?" She pouted with what seemed like a genuinely dejected frown on her sweet lips. She put a hand on her hips and straightened her back, pushing her chest forward some. The neckline of her black, skin-tight cocktail dress worked to her advantage by revealing a bit of her cleavage to him. Other men and the occasional woman were beginning to stare. Not so much at her and her body, but just the fact that the man before her even hesitated to accept her offer. What, were you blind! There she was practically laying herself down for you!

"I-I do!" He nodded hastily. It seemed like he was having trouble keeping his tongue in his mouth, but suddenly his mouth just got noticeably drier. "I-it's just that I don't have any prote—"

"I gotcha covered, big boy," she winked, showing him her clutch. She actually almost had to fight a scoff. What, a man who went to a club without even one condom? God, what the hell kind of amateur was he? That wasn't even on the first page of the idiot's guide to getting laid; that should have been on the fucking cover!

"You can just lie down and let me take care of you tonight," she winked as she took him by the hand and led him through the tightly packed crowd towards an even more dimly lit hallway. Along both sides of it were multiple doors. Luckily for her, one of them, a little ways into the hall and to the left, was one with the little sign next to the doorknob that said "VACANT." Roxy opened the door and pulled the man, now grinning stupidly, inside before closing the door behind her and locking it so that the sign changed to "OCCUPIED."

She turned around to face the man, and there he was sitting on the edge of the flimsy twin-sized bed, fully undoing his tie. Eager little thing, this boy.

It was actually her first time ever to be in one of those nightclub rooms. People could call her loose, a tramp, a whore, or whatever else they liked, but she would never actually let herself have sex with a guy—or a girl, in such a forsaken little room. Bare, water-stained walls, an old wooden nightstand on which stood numerous, half-empty bottles of lotions and lubricants, and a bare bed with a mattress littered with stains that disgusted her so much she would never even think of just sitting on. Such an environment for such an activity was for trash, and Roxy Lalonde was no such trash. But for such occasions as this, she made an exception. On occasions like this, these kinds of rooms weren't meant for that; they served another, much deadlier purpose.

"Ah-ah-ah!" She teased in a sing-song voice as she walked over to him, swinging her hips as she did so. The sounds of the steps of her high stiletto heels echoed through the room, the pulsing music now sounding much farther away. She unraveled the striped dark purple and lavender muffler around her neck that dangled over her shoulders against her back. "On your feet first!"

He chuckled softly and stood up on two feet, striding over to her. She seductively wrapped her muffler around his neck so that he was wearing it how she had been just moments ago, then pulled his face down towards hers and captured his lips in a tantalizing kiss she knew would drive him wild.

He was the first to moan into the kiss as he placed both his hands on her hips before running them up and down her sides. He pried her lips open with his and slid his tongue into her mouth, sliding it across her teeth as he did so. Her tongue met his and they wrestled each other for dominance over the kiss. Just like their drinking games, Roxy won yet another round. All the while though, she had been surreptitiously tightening her grip on both ends of the muffler, silently wrapping the fabric tighter around his neck.

The man didn't notice what Roxy was doing until after he broke the kiss, the young blonde easily getting the better of him. "Baby," he chuckled, his deep voice growling with a hint of playfulness. Roxy said nothing though, she just tugged down on the muffler again to pull him into another kiss, tightening her grip on the fabric some more and constricting his neck further. He broke away, though, coming up for air again. "…O-okay, Baby, it's a little tight… Baby!"

He reached for her wrist to try to get her to let go, but the second he did, she reared her leg back and forcefully rammed her knee into his groin.

" _Fuck!_ " He howled, his voice cracking as he fell to his knees before her, his hands immediately clutching his crotch in pain. He doubled over, the back of his head hitting the metal bedframe before slumping backwards to the ground. Roxy just watched on with slight amusement, her hands still holding onto the muffler that wrapped around his neck and his hand rubbing his groin. Oh quit being a baby,  _Baby._ You won't need them for very long anymore, anyway.

She just pressed the sole of her right heel against his crotch and pressed down hard, trapping his hands and his balls under her shoe. She shifted her weight forward, applying even more pressure, and his eyes widened even more, screaming in agony.

Roxy took both ends of the muffler and stretched her arms outward and behind her, constricting around his throat until his screams for help turned into desperate croaks for air. With yet another playful giggle, she took both ends of the scarf in her right hand, and put her left on her hip, leaning forward even more towards him.

"Sorry," she smirked. " _Baby_."

With that, she jerked her right hand diagonally upwards towards her, pulling the man's torso along with it. She twisted the muffler around her arm, adding more pressure to strangling him. His eyes rolled into the back of his head, his mouth open in a gurgled gasp, before he finally went limp and silent.

As soon as she was sure she was dead, Roxy lifted her foot off his groin before pointing the sharp stiletto heel and jabbing it into his crotch for good measure. She kind of smirked at her sadism as she twisted her foot a bit; she had been hanging around her younger cousin for far too long.

Removing her bloodied heel from his groin, she unraveled her muffler from around the now dead man's neck, the skin red and irritated where it wrapped around due to the friction. She grabbed the roll of paper towels off the nightstand to wipe off the blood from her shoe before feeling under him for his wallet in his back pocket for some sort of identification.

**…**

Roxy quietly slipped out of the room, now wearing the black beret she had previously tucked under her belt and her muffler so that it covered her face just above her nostrils. Straightening her back a bit, she casually walked down the hall, ready to leave the club.

She took notice of a couple further down the hall near the entrance, inspecting the signs next to the doorknob. Figuring she should be some Good Samaritan and help them out, she approached then and tapped the girl on the shoulder.

"Fifth door to your left is open, loves," she smiled under the fabric of her muffler to them. They just sheepishly thanked her before walking off, and Roxy walked off out of the hallway and out the club, as if nothing had even happened.

* * *

_Lalonde Residence, Veilchen Borough_   
_Friday, May 18—6:08 AM_

The next morning, Dirk headed over to Roxy and her cousin's apartment complex, holding a plastic bag of various bottles of painkillers and box sets of tea bags. He had just finished up at the club; it closed around five in the morning, and he stopped by the convenience store at his usual gas station to pick up some things that he felt Roxy would definitely need to help recover from all her drinking from the night before. Not that last night had been any special case; he swore that she was at least a little tipsy more often than she was sober, and it was like the girl wouldn't be caught dead without some form of alcoholic beverage in hand.

He reached her apartment door, unhooked his keyring that dangled from one of his belt loops and reached for her door key. She had given it to him when they used to be hit partners a few years back; she had one to his place as well. It was for practical purposes, mostly; if one was in charge of gathering information to send off to the other, they could leave the documents on the dining table or something for them to come home to. Their partnership ended three or four years ago, when her cousin first got into the hit business; Roxy wanted to be by her cousin's side to protect her should something go wrong… although it seemed to Dirk at least that it was Rosekeeping  _Roxy_  out of trouble most of the time instead of the other way around.

Dirk unlocked the door and slipped into the apartment as quietly as he could; Roxy was quite a light sleeper, and also quite the crotchety one when she was woken up earlier than she would want to be, especially if she'd been drinking.

He was surprised to see that the light above the dining table was on, although all the other lights in the apartment were off. Papers and notebooks were sprawled all over the tablecloth, and a laptop was turned on and plugged in.

"Who's there?" A voice asked defensively from one of the rooms. It was her cousin.

"It's me," he replied, although he tried to keep a bit of a hushed tone. "Dirk."

A girl came out of one of the rooms, quietly closing the door behind her. She looked no older than twenty, and her light, layered blonde hair that she wore quite shorter than Roxy's was a bit disheveled. Roxy's cousin, eighteen year old Rose Lalonde.

"Dirk," she smiled tiredly as she walked over to him. "What are you doing here so early?"

"I just got back from a gig," he replied, taking her into a friendly, almost older brotherly hug. She only went up to his collarbones. "How about you, what are you doing up? It's six in the morning."

"Studying for finals," she groaned a bit, taking a seat in front of her laptop. "The quarter ends in a few weeks."

Rose was a first year at the University of Terranos majoring in zoology with a minor in psychology. Dirk couldn't help but smile inwardly at her and the mess of study guides before her; truth be told, he kind of wished that was him. UT was where he had wanted to attend, before certain circumstances came up…

"What's in the bag?" She asked him.

"Oh," he blinked, her question snapping him out of his thoughts. He raised it up a bit to her. "Some aspirin and supplements for Roxy when she wakes up. She had more than her usual fill at the club last night."

He walked over to the breakfast nook connected to the wall across from Rose and set the bag on the countertop before turning to her. She had eye bags that were atypical of her normally porcelain skin.

"You haven't been up all night, have you?" He asked with a bit of a raised eyebrow.

She just shrugged the question off. "Oh, no. I napped for half an hour."

He just chuckled softly before turning back to the bag. "Well I don't want you to get sick, especially when you have finals coming up." He took out an aloe jelly supplement juice pouch and handed it to her. "Just in case Roxy doesn't put it to use, you might as well."

She eyed the juice pouch for a second before taking it with a silent nod of acknowledgement. "How's Dave?" She asked as she unscrewed the twist cap and took a few sips. The question seemed like more of a way to break an awkward silence than out of genuine concern.

Dirk stayed quiet for a second at the mention of his younger brother. "…He's fine. Same as always."

"Sounds about right," she nodded, going back to her studying.

"What's all the noise?" A lazy and slurred voice whined from one of the rooms. The door opened, and out came Roxy, clad in a tank top and pajama bottoms, her blonde hair messily ruffled from having been pressed against a pillow.

"Morning to you too," Dirk smirked as she scratched the back of her head with one hand and stretching out her other arm.

"What's all this?" She asked, approaching the bag on the counter, rummaging through its contents. "Aspirin… aloe drinks?"

"Take some when you're actually awake," Dirk said to her. "Come on, get back into bed."

"I'm just fine!" She snapped at him, and Rose just snickered at the two of them from the dining table as she typed up another study guide. "And quit talking so loud! …I just need coffee is all."

Dirk just cocked an eyebrow at her as she walked behind the counter and rummaged through a cupboard for some instant coffee powder mix. "You know coffee for hangovers doesn't actually work, right?"

" _Thank you_ , Dr. Strider," she scoffed, snapping her head to him with a glare. All that did for her, though, was just irritate her banging headache further from the rapid motion. "O-ow… Just give me one of those bottles of aspirin."

He grabbed one of the sealed bottles in the bag before stopping himself. "…Is coffee with aspirin even safe?" He raised an eyebrow with a bit of concern, looking at the label of the bottle in his hand.

"Look," she turned to him, mug in hand. She held it under the sink faucet and turned it on. "If I fall into a coma or something, then I know not to do it next time."

Oh God, she seemed even more irrational when recovering from being drunk than when she actually was.

Roxy snatched the bottle from Dirk's hand and put her water-filled mug in the microwave to nuke. "Aw, look at you, taking care of me. I thought you only go through this much effort for little Jakey." She playfully ran a manicured fingernail against the tip of his nose.

"We're not going out," he rolled his eyes a bit, tilting his head down to show her his eyes glaring at her from behind his shades. Roxy had some crazy idea that he and his best friend, Jake English, had a thing for each other. It was something she always teased him about; even more so than her unrequited notion of her and him dating.

"Hey, Rosie," Roxy hinted to Rose, who just made a bit of a face at the nickname; she always hated it when Roxy playfully called her 'Rosie.' Roxy hooked her arm around Dirk's neck, although she had to reach up quite a bit; although she was taller than her younger cousin, Dirk still towered over both of them, with Roxy barely reaching the bottom of his chin. "Who do you think would top in this relationship, Jake or Dirk?"

"I think I've been here long enough," Dirk announced with a bit of hurry and a loud enough voice to irritate Roxy's hangover, peeling the girl's arm off his shoulder. "Sorry for all this noise while you're studying, Rose."

"I'm used to it," she replied with a wave of her hand, not looking up from her monitor from whatever it was she was typing.

"Get some sleep, Rox!" He chastised in a stern, almost fatherly tone to his friend as he opened the door to leave, but she just waved him off. He turned to Rose and smiled a bit, softening his voice. "I'll see you two later."

The microwave beeped as soon as Dirk left, and Roxy opened the small door to retrieve her now hot water to make her coffee.

"Ohhh," Roxy laughed, hooking her fingers around the mug handle. "Dirk's  _definitely_ the one takin' it up the ass from Jake."

Rose just looked up from her laptop to stare blankly at her cousin for a second, frozen in the middle of taking another sip from her juice pouch.

* * *

_Strider Residence, Veilchen Borough_   
_Friday, May 18—8:34 AM_

Upon returning to his apartment, an exhausted Dirk was greeted by two pairs of shoes haphazardly discarded near the floor mat. One was a pair of familiar black and red Supras. Another were a pair of dark blue pumps.

Looked like Dave brought yet another lady friend home to stay the night.

Dirk couldn't help but let out a quiet, lamentable sigh as he closed the door and locked it behind him. Really, he couldn't say anything about it lest he be branded a hypocrite; he's brought his fair share of girls and guys back home-Dirk Strider wasn't one to judge. With Dave, however, it seemed was turning out to be just like him.

But what guy didn't want to be Dirk Strider? He had men and women alike leaning over his turntables trying to solicit a song request and maybe a fun time in one of the back rooms of the club, if they were lucky enough for him to be in the mood. He worked out a body that he, for all purposes ironic and seemingly counter-intuitive, kept relatively clothed under his smartly tailored suit he wore when performing hits. And to that end, he was among the most efficient and prolific hitmen in Veilchen Borough.

All of that was every rhyme and reason in the world for him to  _not_  want his baby brother Dave to follow in his bloodied, self-destructive footsteps. The path in life Dirk chose to take was  _not_ the one he wanted Dave to follow.

Dirk hung his keyring on the hook on the wall next to Dave's keys and kicked off his shoes, grabbing a bottle of water from the torn open 24-pack that sat next to the refrigerator. His apartment, while certainly livable, completely betrayed his reputation as one of the highest paid hitmen in the Veilchen. It was quite average; and with the money that both he and Dave brought in from hit contracts, as well as their freelancing jobs as club and party DJs, they could easily move out of the middle class area of the Veilchen that they lived in and into a gilded penthouse in the Fortune. But that's how Dirk personally liked it. He and Dave didn't have a lot growing up; boy, did they not have a lot. But as far as he was concerned, he didn't need a lot as an adult either. It was one of those ironies he liked to play on during those rare occasions they had company over. It kept them guessing, adding a bit of mystery—if not eccentricity, to the elder Strider.

The Veilchen Borough, known to city locals as just "the Veilchen," was located on the southern banks of the Hussie River across from the Gold Fortune District, was the second largest district in Terranos both in size and population behind the Gold Fortune. The Veilchen, derived the german word for violet, was named after the native purple orchid fields that populated the coasts of the southern reaches of the Grand Hussie Sound, by the large droves of German immigrants that to this day dominated the district's ethnic demography.

While the Gold Fortune dominated the city's economy in government, the service sector, tourism, and the presence of numerous company headquarters, the Veilchen's mostly comprised of heavy industries, manufacturing, and technology and robotics. As such, the Veilchen's financial influence was surely a force to be reckoned with-certainly worth more than most small cities across the country, but paled in comparison to that of the Gold Fortune's. Socioeconomic disparities were consequently much more apparent in the Veilchen: the direct juxtaposition of expensive, glass high rises and poverty-line tenement complexes was startling to those who lived outside the Veilchen, but was all just a part of life for residents like the Striders and the Lalondes.

But especially for Dirk and Dave. Dirk in particular knew the rougher parts of the Veilchen much better than he liked to discuss even in private. Even with Dave.

Dirk noticed the door to Dave's room, which was next the living room sofa, was slightly open. Dirk peered inside tentatively, and the smell of sex that he knew all too well struck his nostrils almost immediately. The room was dark, and Dave and whoever he had brought home were obviously still asleep. He couldn't see anything beyond a large lump on the bed hidden under the sheets. It almost hurt the older Strider, knowing that under the blankets was his promiscuous baby brother, sleeping with someone he was pretty sure Dave didn't even know by name.

This wasn't how Dave was supposed to turn out.

Not being able to stand to look for another second, Dirk silently closed the door when his phone vibrated in his pocket. He reached into his jeans for his phone and checked the screen for a preview bubble of the text message he had just received.

Looked like someone wanted his hit services again.

With another deep, heartbroken sigh, Dirk just put his phone and his still unopened water bottle on the coffee table and fell back onto the sofa. He could deal with the client when he woke up. Whatever it was, they could wait. The sofa was much too short to accommodate his tall frame, with his calves dangling off one of the armrests, but he was much too tired to even go to his room where he'd surely be much more comfortable in his bed.

If he were a betting man, he'd wager he would just wake up from another one of his old childhood nightmares soon enough. Bed or sofa, it was all the same. It had been thirteen years, and he's slept in a lot of beds. At this point, no comfort from any bed could allay them anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all your support so far! As always, constructive comments and feedback are always greatly appreciated.


	3. No One's Place to Judge

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THIS IS SO HORRIBLY LATE OH MY GOSH I DON'T DESERVE TO GROVEL FOR ANYONE'S FORGIVENESS.

_I remember when I first met that kid John Egbert. Kind of clumsy, and definitely high strung—English sure as hell had his work cut out for him in mentoring that kid. But I could tell he was good. I guess that's why it… well, it broke my heart a bit when English told me he was in the hit business. No kid should ever see death; much less partake in the killing that leads to it._

_What are you gonna do, though? Can lead a horse to water. Can't make it drink. I could have told him all I wanted to just bail out and just spend what few teen years he had left just being a kid. But I couldn't—and wouldn't have—forced him to listen to me. I'm sure he had his reasons for why he wanted to be a hitman. Who would I be to interfere?_

**...**

_English Residence, Gold Fortune District_   
_Tuesday, May 22—3:27 PM_

A little over a week had passed since John's first hit.

The adrenaline from finally been allowed to go on the field must have just gone to the boy's head, Jake figured; when they were getting their next assignment and how they would go about tracking the scalawags down were the only things John ever seemed to talk about anymore.

Jake reclined on his sofa, his elbow pressed into the armrest with the back of his cheek propped up against his knuckles. Between his fingers was a half-finished cigarette which he would take long drags out of on occasion. All the while, he listened half-attentively to John's overzealous ramblings and watched the boy tap away at the touchscreen of whatever that fangled handheld gaming device with one more screen than there should have been in his hands. Jake couldn't help but chuckle to himself as he watched the teenager that sat on the opposite end of the sofa as him.

How old was Jake turning this year? Twenty-two? Twenty-three? God, he'd lost count, but he at least knew he was just shy of twenty-five years. Jake English was still in his prime, fresh out of university, but he felt so old already; hell, he was only a few years older enough to be John's brother! He supposed one's sense of time slowed down as one got older. Especially when one lived as rough a life as he had. He watched John's face scrunch up in a bit of frustration with whatever game it was he was playing. The lad was only seventeen, and he had already killed.

…Maybe Jane was right.

"Are you listening?"

Jake raised his eyebrows a bit, the question snapping him out of his thoughts. He looked up and saw John staring at him with a smirk and a bit of a cocked eyebrow. His game was paused, though he held the clamshell console and stylus as if he were ready to restart at any time. Jake's expression warmed up a bit and smiled back at the boy.

"Of course I was," he lied, holding the cigarette to his lips and inhaling.

John just chuckled and shook his head. "Liar."

The older brunet prematurely exhaled the smoke away from John's direction and turned back to him. "I was too! And besides, don't you have homework you should be off to right about now?"

Jake leaned in so that he could see what was happening in John's game, but the younger of the two just waved him off with the hand that held the stylus. "It's taken care of! I did it during class."

Jake playfully narrowed his eyes at the boy and hummed condescendingly, pulling and leaning back into his seat as he did so. "Hmm. Sounds like the exact same kind of bullshit I used to pull when I was your age."

"I did!" John laughed, glancing at him from the corner of his eye. "Look into my notebook and see for yourself! God, you sound like my sister."

Jake held his hands up defensively as he reached over to press his near finished cigarette into the half-filled ash tray. He got up from his seat, groaning and stretching his chest out by pulling his elbows behind his back, and dusted off his gray tank top and adjusted his suspenders before he started for the kitchen.

"Want anything to eat?" Jake asked John as he scratched his own side with the exposed fingers of his trigger gloves.

John looked up at him for a second, then even higher where the wall met the ceiling behind Jake's head in thought. "Mm… Well what do you have?"

Jake couldn't help but laugh a bit at his reply. "You know, that is a wonderful question." He turned around and walked through the door frame that led to his kitchen. "I might have to go shopping for a few things tonight…"

Jake opened the door to his refrigerator when he heard the doorbell to the front door go off. He poked his head out to look at the door, and John was about to get up from the sofa to walk over to it.

"Want me to get that?" John offered, setting his game down, but Jake shook his head. The older of the two waved his hand at him, motioning for him to sit down.

"No, no," Jake shook his head as he walked over to the door. "You keep doing things." John just chucked softly, though he continued to watch his mentor lean down slightly to peer through the peep hole. Jake's lips curled into a smile after a second then reached to unlock the door. When Jake opened it, John saw a tall man with short, spiked blond hair and odd looking pointed sunglasses. The black sleeves of his dress shirt were rolled up around the middle of his biceps, and wow John had never seen an orange waistcoat. With that color scheme, he kind of looked like Halloween.

"Dirk!" Jake exclaimed with a laugh. He hugged the blond, who stood just a few inches taller than himself. John watched the man apparently named Dirk just nonchalantly snake an arm under Jake's to return the hug with a few pats on the back, the gesture much less exuberant than Jake's.

"What brings you to these parts?" Jake asked him as he pulled away and stepped aside for Dirk to enter his apartment. Dirk nodded, his silent acknowledgement of thanks, as Jake closed the door behind him.

"I got a call from a potential client after a DJ gig I had a few days ago," Dirk started, but he paused when he saw John, who was still sitting on the sofa staring at him. Dirk looked at him for a second through his shades, his eyebrow going up slightly. "Who's the kid?"

Jake could tell John was fighting off a little bit of a scowl at the question, and he hurriedly walked over between the two. "That's right, I never told you! Dirk, he's the boy I was telling you about the other day. This here is John Egbert. John, this chap here's my best friend Dirk Strider."

John got up and walked up to Dirk. He had to look up to him just so they could make eye contact; he was even taller than Jake, and the blond was probably a full head taller than himself, not including how his hair was spiked upwards in the back.

"Nice meeting you," John smiled as he extended his hand out to Dirk. The blond accepted it and returned the gesture firmly, nodding again.

"Likewise."

John could hear a bit of an accent in the way Dirk spoke. What was it, southern maybe? It wasn't especially pronounced, but there definitely was a bit of a twang in his voice. It wasn't that fake British accent Jake liked to imitate so much and so unconvincingly, but much more genuine. Whatever it was, he could tell Dirk wasn't native to Terranos.

"The lad's officially my new partner," Jake eyed the shorter boy proudly. Dirk just cocked his eyebrow up even higher at that as he withdrew his hand.

"Like… hit partner?" He asked. Jake nodded in reply with that irrepressible smile of his. "…Ain't he a bit too young?"

"Hey!" John interrupted, and the two taller men looked down at him. With the height difference, Dirk and Jake looked like two adults trying to quell a child about to throw a tantrum. "I'll have you know I took care of a hit all on my own!"

Dirk tried to fight off a chuckle at his outburst. He put a gloved hand in his pocket and shifted his weight to one side. "Yeah? How old are you, little man?"

"Seventeen," John raised his chin smugly. The chuckle that Dirk staved off moments before escaped his lips at that.

"Impressive," Dirk nodded, his tone genuine.

"He's also Jane's half-brother," Jake added.

"Really now?" Dirk glanced down at John again. "Didn't know Jane had siblings."

John raised an eyebrow in curiosity at the blond. "You know my sister?"

"We go back a few years," he replied casually.

The teen nodded slowly, and Jake cut in again. "Well I was just about to make something for ol' John and I to eat and you're welcome to partake!"

"I appreciate the offer," Dirk started, "but I won't be staying long. I just came by to drop a few things off."

"Oh, that's right," Jake raised his eyebrows. "My apologies! What were you saying just before? Come, we can sit at the table."

John watched the two men walk over to Jake's dining table. To be honest, he really did feel like a little kid in their presence. It was like he was nine again, whenever his dad had business associates over for a meeting. They would congregate in the dining room over beer and cigars, while John was expected to stay upstairs in his room and play silently. He was just about to go back to the sofa and continue his game, but stopped when he heard Dirk call for him.

"You can join too, little man," Dirk looked at him from behind his shades. "This involves you now, since you're English's partner."

John's face lit up at that, failing to hide his excitement. He took his game to the dining table and as he sat down, turned the console off and closed it shut. Dirk paused for a second to watch him, and he couldn't help but crack the slightest smile and shake his head as he opened the folder he had been holding the whole time.

Dirk looked to his right to Jake, and he had his arms crossed on top of the table. Jake's arms were bare, since he was clad only in his form fitting tank top with his suspenders strapped over his shoulders. It wasn't much, but Jake's forearms were dusted with dark hairs, and although Dirk was the more muscular of the two, Jake's biceps bulged slightly from how he was shifting his weight forward against the table…

"Something wrong, buddy?"

Dirk snapped himself out of his thoughts and looked up at Jake's face? The brunet eyed with him a bit of concern before looking back to his arm. Dirk followed his gaze, and saw that Jake had noticed he was staring even though he was wearing his shades still; he was rubbing his bicep where Dirk's eyes had been, then dusted off his fingers like he had something on his skin.

"No," Dirk casually replied, and he went back to the folder in front of him. "Like I was saying though, I got a call from a client, and I thought I'd pass the job off to you." He handed Jake some of the papers that were in his folder, and the brunet quickly perused them. Dirk glanced over to John. "Egbert here too."

"Why us?" Jake looked up at him with a slightly raised eyebrow. He had to push his glasses up since they tilted slightly from when he was reading.

"Why not?" Dirk shrugged. "You said the other day when we had dinner that business for you was slow lately. Thought you could use the excitement."

Jake just smiled slightly before going back to reading through the papers. They turned out to be profiles on the targets of the case.

"I have enough to take care of myself too," Dirk added. "Thought you could help a bro out is all."

"I would be more than delighted too!" Jake nodded. "Anything for my best buddy!" Dirk was one of his closest friends, after all. And no self-respecting gentleman would ever turn down a request for help from a close friend. It was one of his rules.

"Thanks, dude," Dirk nodded. He closed the folder and slid across the table to Jake. "Why don't you take that while you're at it? I already informed my client that you'd possibly be taking over. I'll text her the confirmation details before I leave."

Both brunets looked up at the blond between them. "'Her?'"

Dirk glanced back and forth between them with a bit of amusement. "What, you don't think women get their hands dirty too?" He looked at John in particular with a knowing smirk. "Or did you forget that your sister's one of the city's most sought after hitmen?"

John just smiled sheepishly, diverting his gaze away from Dirk's. Even behind his sunglasses, he could see the man's eyes. Not that they were particularly mean looking or anything; he could tell that this Dirk was a nice guy. Maybe a little rough around the edges, but if was friends with Jake, then he could  _only_ be a nice guy, he figured.

"So what, pray tell, is our lady's contact information or anything of the sort?" Jake asked Dirk.

"Actually," Dirk started as he leaned back into his seat. He rocked the chair back on its legs. "I was supposed to meet her at our usual joint later this afternoon to comb through the details about the job. I can just tell her that you two'll be there instead and just keep an eye out for you two."

"Sounds fine and dandy with me," Jake nodded, stacking the papers and slipping them back into the folder. He watched Dirk take his gloves off and get his phone out of his pocket and start texting, his thumbs darting across the touch screen.

"Just watch out for two men…" He mumbled aloud, speaking slowly as he typed the words he was saying. "One in a green coat and one in a school uniform?" He looked up to the two brunets with a raised eyebrow to see if that was okay, and they nodded in reply.

"Cool," Dirk stuffed his phone into his pocket and slipped his black gloves back on. "That's about all I needed to do here. She'll be at the usual spot at 4:30."

Jake and John looked over to the cable box below his TV where the time was displayed in gold LED lights. It was 3:52.

"Should be moseying on out right about now then," Jake breathed with a bit of a sigh and stretched his arms out again. He looked to John and got up from his seat with Dirk. "I'll just show the good man out, get dressed right quick and we can be on our way, yes?"

Jake took a few steps back and reached behind him to undo the locks and open the front door, watching Dirk slip his dress shoes on as he did so.

"Where are you headed off to right now?" Jake asked him as he stood up straight. Dirk just shrugged slightly and checked his silver wrist watch.

"Mm… I have some business of my own to attend to," Dirk replied, adjusting his shades. "Might get something to eat later with Roxy and Jane tomorrow tonight, though. Should join us if you get the chance." He looked over to John, who was packing his belongings into his book bag. "You can come along too if you like."

"Afraid the ol' boy's got school this week," Jake chuckled as he turned to John too. John just tried to return the smile, but he had to admit that he did feel a bit left out. Even if it would have been dinner with four people much older than him, two of which he didn't know anything about… Aside from maybe Karkat, John had to admit that he really didn't have very many friends his age.

"He's right," John shrugged coolly, trying to play off his disappointment. As much as he and Jake got along in a big brother and little brother kind of relationship, Jake certainly knew how to take the role a little farther than John would have liked him to at times.

Dirk nodded. "Maybe next time then." Jake held the door open for the blond, but Dirk paused again and turned back to John. "John, right?"

The teen looked up from the inside of his book bag to acknowledge Dirk, nodding after a second.

"You know, I got a kid brother not that much older than you," Dirk started, scratching the back of his head some. "Though you seem like you got it together a lot better than him."

John raised his eyebrow slightly at the mention of a little brother.

"He's a hitman too," the blond added. "My partner, actually. Maybe you'll run into him one of these days."

With that, Dirk turned around to face Jake. "Let me know if you're free to come with the girls and me."

Jake flashed his signature grin. "Will do, good buddy." He hugged Dirk again like he had when he greeted him earlier. Dirk stayed motionless for a second, but unlike earlier, fully returned the hug by wrapping his arms around the middle of the brunet's back and patting him softly before walking out the door and down the hall.

* * *

_A La Mode Café, Gold Fortune District_   
_Tuesday, May 22—4:27 PM_

John hurried across the parking lot to the double doors of the café he and Jake were scheduled to meet their mystery client, with Jake not all that far behind him.

" _I'll_  open the door for you," John snapped at Jake over his shoulder. He heard Jake's car horn beep quickly from Jake locking the doors from the button on his key.

"No I don't quite think you will be, you whippersnapper!" Jake smirked, challenging his young charge.

"You opened the door for me last time!" John retorted, quickening his pace towards the doors.

"Excuse you there, young Egbert, but I open the door  _all_  the time!"

"No, I don't think you do!"

Jake, being much taller than John, used his longer legs to pass him and get to the door before the younger brunet did. Just as Jake reached for the bar on the door to pull it open though, John harshly shoved him out of his way and to to the side. Jake stumbled over his feet, and without time to regain his composure, clumsily slammed into the wall with a heavy thud.

" _Ow!_ " Jake grunted in a slight bit of pain as his right arm pressed roughly into the wall, chipping some of the painted stucco off as he collided into it. He pushed himself off the wall and dusted some of the stucco and dirt off his clothes and exposed forearms. When he turned back to John, he saw the teen standing at the doors, holding one open with one hand and motioning to Jake to enter before him with the other.

"Tch," Jake scoffed with a playful smirk as he ruffled the boy's hair and walked through the door.

John followed his mentor into the café, who was talking to the receptionist for a table. The lady smiled at him before returning her direction to Jake, who waved his hand to her as if he were declining something.

"Thank you so kindly though, beautiful miss," Jake nodded with a grin. The receptionist just returned the smile, obviously trying to force down the blush in her cheeks before turning to her coworker.

Jake looked over to John and got closer to him. "Our mystery dame ought to be here already, so I said to the missy that we won't be needing a table of our own."

John scanned the fairly crowded restaurant at that. "Well just who are we looking for?"

"Strider told me in his text earlier that she'd be wearing a red-orange summer dress with a matching shawl and dark blonde hair," Jake replied. His eyes lit up for a second. "And I think I found her! Follow me."

Jake and John shuffled their way through the tables and waiters with full plates. Jake was a few steps ahead of John, headed towards a veranda with the mid-spring sunlight pouring through the floor-length windows and ceiling skylights. Jake stopped at a table in a rather private corner, and John almost stumbled over someone's bag on the floor as he tried to catch up.

"Pardon us, but are you the miss that a Mr. Dirk Strider referred us to?" Jake asked the lady. John looked over Jake's arm at the lady, who was taking a few sips out of her café au lait. Like Dirk had told them, her long dark blonde hair fell down her back with some over her shoulders. Her sleeveless red-orange summer dress kind of glittered in the direct sunlight. She looked fairly young, possibly in her mid-30s.

"Was that his name?" She asked, tilting her head to the side. "I never asked. I'd… prefer as much anonymity as possible, if that's okay with you. At least on my part. O-oh, please take a seat by the way."

"Not that all," Jake shook his head as he pulled out a chair. John followed, right next to him. "Our jobs are our clients' wishes, so however you would like for us to conduct business is purely up to you, fine miss."

As they talked, John couldn't help but steal a few glances at her chest. The hemline of her dress was rather low cut and exposed more of her cleavage than John personally felt comfortable seeing, especially for a woman as old as she seemed to be. They also seemed to be surgically enhanced, given that they didn't look the most natural. Calm and collected Jake, of course, didn't seem to pay any mind to them.

John quickly snapped himself out of his thoughts, though. Jake always told him that any hitman worth his salt never let his mind roam, especially when interfacing with a client. John tried to focus on the conversation, but when he looked at the woman again, he saw her staring at him. He followed her gaze, and saw that she had been looking at the school insignia on the breast of his blazer.

"…But if I may ask," she spoke again, this time to John. "How old are you?"

"…Seventeen," John replied after a second.

Jake just smiled slightly at the teen. "Young as he may be, miss, my partner is quite capable. But to get to the point, if I'm not overstepping any boundaries, what exactly will you need our assistance for? The man you originally contacted gave us a dossier of—"

"It's my son," she cut Jake off with a bit of firmness in her tone. John's eyes widened at bit at that. Wait, she was a  _mother?_  All the more reason for her dress to be completely unacceptable!

"Have you heard of that drug cartel that was all over the news recently?" She asked after a pause, her voice softening a bit.

"I recall bits and pieces of information, yes," Jake nodded. A few weeks ago, there had been a serial kidnapping and murdering involving a ragtag group of smugglers. Their targets had been some of the children of Gold Fortune's most elite. "…Your son was one of them?"

"God no!" She exclaimed, almost like she was insulted by Jake's question. She looked around for a second, and leaned into the table and tried to keep her tone as hushed as possible. "He was killed by them! Just sixteen years old, and he was murdered!"

She explained to them that because the group of smugglers was so small, they kidnapped mainly teenagers and young adults and forced them to either do their bidding or be killed. The woman's only son was one of the victims. According to her description of him, he was one of the brightest at his school and never compromised his morals for anything. She said that he didn't seem like the type to never give into anyone, and that integrity was what unfortunately cost him his life.

"…I suppose that's why I seemed concerned for your young partner here when he said how old he was," she said after a short pause. Jake saw her eyes starting to water, and he offered her the cloth napkin in front of him. She smiled quickly at his gesture, thanking him, and accepted it to dab the corners of her eyes.

"That's quite all right," Jake nodded reassuringly. "So these smugglers, you would like for us to take care of them?"

She nodded again with a spiteful scowl, putting the napkin down as she did so. "There's five of them, those bastards. I don't care if you find out which one of them did the kidnapping or which one killed him. They're all guilty. I just want them all dead. I'm willing to pay five thousand dollars per—"

"About the pay," Jake stopped her. She looked rather surprised at the interruption for a second, but relaxed in her seat and took another sip of her drink.

"We'll do this for free," Jake smiled.

"What!?" John and the woman stared at him in bewilderment. She almost choked on her coffee at his proposition; Jake just paid their confusion no mind.

"You  _never_  take cases for less than five thousand," John commented rather lowly. "And she was offering that _per person!_ "

"A-are you sure?" The woman asked again. "I can even pay upfront now! If you prefer cash, we can go to the bank across the street—"

"I am quite positive of myself, madam," Jake nodded with a chuckle. He turned to John, who was still staring at him with a cocked eyebrow and his jaw slightly dropped. He just patted him on the shoulder comfortingly and turned back to the lady.

"For the sake of anonymity, like you said moments ago," Jake started. "I wouldn't want to discombobulate anyone with the messier details of my past, but let us just say that I have…" He furrowed his brow in a bit of thought. "…I have personal experience with these kinds of things. And your case, my lady, just tugs at the heartstrings."

The woman and John just started at him even more as he spoke. The lady nodded slowly and voiced her understanding, but John just stayed quiet. The messier details of his past? Personal experience with these kinds of things? Things like what? Drug rings? Was he kidnapped before?

"If you would just sign this contract, of course," Jake said after a bit of silence. He reached into his folder and got out a multi-layered printed document. He pulled a pen out of his pocket and, after crossing a few things out and signing one of the dotted lines at the bottom. He gave the contract for John to sign as well, and passed the paper and pen to the lady. "Then we can put this project into motion!"

The woman took the contract and clicked the pen, reading the document over. She looked up at Jake tentatively, who was just beaming as brightly as ever.

"And you're sure about doing this for free?" She asked, still skeptical of Jake. He just nodded confidently.

"Perfectly so."

The woman looked down at the paper again and signed the last empty dotted line at the end of the document and handed it back to Jake.

"Thank you, miss," Jake nodded. He ripped out one of the sheets under the paper they all signed; it was another copy of the contract, with the ink from their signatures transferred onto it. "And here is your copy, of course. I will contact you again as soon as the job is completed."

"Thank you again," she accepted the contract. She folded it into fourths and slipped it into her purse in the chair next to her. "Where will you two be headed off to now?"

Jake checked his wristwatch. It was 4:56. "Well… neither the boy nor I have eaten dinner yet. Since this is our usual café, I wouldn't mind eating while we're already here. John, are you still hungry?"

"Yeah," John nodded with a sheepish smile. He had to admit that throughout the entire meeting, he had been trying to fight off his stomach from growling too loudly.

"Then it's settled," Jake laughed. He turned to the lady across from him and gestured towards her. "You're more than welcome to join us, if you would like! A couple of blokes like us would be absolutely delighted to have a beautiful madam like yourself grace us with your company. And dinner is on me, of course."

She just laughed at his flattery. It was the first time they had heard her laugh. It sounded quite melodic, actually. She just reached into her wallet for a small photo and slid it across the table towards them, and showed them a rather extravagant wing on her left ring finger. "I'll have you know I'm married."

Jake and John looked at the photo: it was one of her and two other males. She stood next to one whom they could only assume was her husband. He was a head taller and much older—maybe twice as old—as she was. In front and between them was a boy who didn't look much older than John. It must have been their son.

"My unfortunate loss, miss," Jake bowed his head, holding his hand to his heart for a second before passing the photograph back to her. "Well, you know my usual here if the waiter comes back," he said to John. He looked at both of them and smiled. "If you would please excuse me for a moment, I'll be off to the gentlemen's room for a quick minute."

He bowed his head again and stood up, pushing in his chair back under the table, and walked off.

The woman and John watched him leave and as soon as he was gone, turned back to each other.

"He's so polite," the woman chuckled to John as she opened up a menu again. John just nodded in agreement as he opened up the menu in front of him as well.

"… _'Discombobulated'_ …" She muttered underneath her breath. John overheard her, and he couldn't help but snicker and shake his head.

She looked up at John again. "…Does he always talk like a—"

"You get used to it," John smiled with another laugh.

* * *

_Strider Residence, Veilchen Borough_   
_Tuesday, May 22—6:47 PM_

Later that evening, as Dirk approached the front door to his apartment, he reached for his key ring that dangled from his belt loop, he heard the doorknob jingle and unlock from inside the apartment. His hand that reached for his door key froze as he watched the knob for a second, and the door swinging open promptly followed, opened by a young woman. Her long dark hair was disheveled—like she had just woken up despite it being 6:40 in the evening—and her light blue cocktail dress had wrinkles in places that even to Dirk didn't look like they were intended to be part of the design.

Another one of Dave's anonymous squeezes, Dirk thought with only the slightest bit of annoyance.

The woman, who only went up to Dirk's collarbone even as she stood in her high heels, stared up at him with a bit of surprise. He just looked her over quickly before nonchalantly clearing his throat and stepping outside of the doorway to make room for her to leave. She simply nodded her head in acknowledgement, and without a single word, bowed out through the door with diverted eyes. Dirk watched her hastily shuffle down the hall as she dug through her clutch for her phone and sharply turned the corner, now out of sight.

As soon as she was gone, Dirk entered the doorway and closed the door behind him. He turned around to see Dave walking out of his room adjusting his black necktie, staring at him through his polished black aviator shades. Dirk returned his little brother's gaze for a moment before setting his keys on the dining table with a loud clatter.

"Who was that?" Dirk asked after a tense silence. In the back of his head, he didn't know why he bothered asking. He already knew where the conversation would end up.

"A friend," Dave shrugged as he pulled on the knot of his tie. Unlike Dirk, who buttoned his dress shirt up completely and wore his tie rather snugly, Dave kept the collar button undone and the knot of his necktie loosened a bit.

Dirk just sighed in response as he walked towards his room, the door right across from Dave's. Over the years, Dirk's noticed that he's become rather passive when it came to Dave. As the kid got older, his rebelliousness, to say the least, just wore him out. What were initially talks of compromise and understanding when Dave was just a boy became strongly worded disciplinary speeches when he reached his early teenage years, which by the time Dave was late into high school just might as well have been passive-aggressive and slaps on the wrist. Even when he was more of a hard ass though—and it was mostly at Dave's provocation—he hated being the heavy.

"How many of them are you gonna bring over to stay the night?" Dave heard Dirk call from the inside of his bedroom. "You always have them over right before we're scheduled for an assignment."

The younger Strider just fell back onto the couch. He reached for his half-finished bottle of beer on the coffee table and took a few swigs. "She left, didn't she? Not like we were still fuckin' and we're just about to go."

"That isn't the point," Dirk poked his head out of his doorway before going back inside. "I told you I don't want you bringing those girls over."

Though secretly, if Dave was going to go out on his routine debauches, Dirk would have honestly preferred they happen in the apartment. Where he could keep an eye out on the little punk and be sure he wasn't getting in any major trouble.

" _You_  used to," Dave responded casually. "Just following the good Big Bro's example."

"I  _used_  to," Dirk snapped as he came out of his room with his double katana. He silently and disapprovingly watched Dave drink his alcohol; it had become a bit of a habit for Dave to have a drink or two before they went out for their hit assignments.

Dave just snickered at his older brother's reply with a knowing smirk. "And then you started fuckin' them outside of the apartment after I caught you and English—"

_Shing!_

With an ease that could have only been attained after years of practice, Dirk withdrew the top katana from its scabbard and swung it in a perfectly diagonal sweep, cleanly cutting off the top half of Dave's bottle's neck. It was a trick he had heard from an old friend—someone who helped him out more than anyone else when he was most desperate for help so many years ago.

Dave stared up at Dirk from behind his aviators directly into his eyes. He could tell that his older brother was doing the same through his pointed shades. He knew he had hit a sour chord with Dirk; many things about his older brother's past were topics of discussion that weren't meant to come up, but what Dave had just brought up was by far one of the most off-limits.

Dirk just glared his baby brother down, his ruby red eyes boring straight into his. He remembered when Dave was a little boy, that glare was more than enough to bring the kid to tears. Apparently, it had lost much of its luster over the years. Dave knew how utterly shameful and humiliating it was for him, what happened five years ago between him and Jake. He was just so horribly thankful that English didn't remember a thing about it.

"…We're going," Dirk spoke flatly as he sheathed his sword into his scabbard. He sharply turned heel and walked towards the door as he attached his sword to the holster on his left waist. Dave just put his unfinished beer on the coffee table and grabbed his own katana that was propped up against the wall next to his door and followed Dirk. The elder Strider grabbed his keys and opened the door for Dave, allowing him to go first, and Dave silently walked past him.

Without another word, Dirk breathed softly and closed the door behind him, locking it from the outside.

**...**

_English had the right idea, what he said about a hitman's job being our clients' wishes. As hitmen, it isn't our position to question our hirers' motives, nor is it our place to judge them. We take our pay, sign the contract, and kill. And our clients, like that mother of the murdered son? She was no different from us. She may not have been holding a gun or swinging a sword, but she wanted people dead. She was willing to pay for someone to do her dirty work._

_She was just as guilty._

_Either way, it wasn't a matter of right or wrong. She had her reasons. People could say what they like, but no one could judge her._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was originally intended to be longer, with more action during the second half… but I copped out and cut it off right before then for pacing reasons. That's going to be chapter four. I'M SORRY A THOUSAND TIMES OVER FOR THAT. I just didn't feel it was most realistic to have every chapter contain bloodshed and such. I have to develop our lovely characters, after all. I'll just crawl into a corner and try to tell myself that this chapter was for that purpose uialhrgareglrksc
> 
> Any and all feedback and constructive criticism is always more than welcome!
> 
> Enjoy Life and Smile.


	4. Anniversary

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we go with chapter four! In this chapter, we formally introduce two new characters (well, one of which we've already seen in a short appearance), who are personally one of my favorites in this AU. Enjoy!

_English Residence, Gold Fortune District_   
_Friday, May 25—5:32 PM_

John groggily rubbed his eyes with one hand as he stretched his other limbs out across the bed he laid on. He blinked a few times to try to clear out his vision and get a bearing of his surroundings; even though things looked a little blurry since he wasn't wearing his glasses, as soon as he was able to see well enough, he remembered that he was in Jake's room.

In addition to picking him up from school and allowing him to hang out at his place and feed him, Jake let the boy take naps on his bed while the elder brunet did his grocery shopping or whatever business he needed to attend to. Sometimes John felt like he was taking advantage of Jake's kindness, but Jake being Jake wouldn't have any of that. Ever since they met, Jake took it upon himself to take care of him; he knew otherwise John would be home alone since Jane moved out and their father was always out on business.

He rolled over to look at the alarm clock on Jake's nightstand and grabbed his glasses to put them on. Also on the nightstand was a small digital clock that was fashioned to look like it was made of bronze and shaped like an old gramophone player. The time on the LED face read 5:34 PM.

John slowly sat up and looked down at his torso; he was still in his school uniform, save for his sweater vest and blazer which hung over the back of Jake's desk chair. His tie was loosened, and deep wrinkles and creases littered his white dress shirt and gray slacks. He pushed himself off the bed and walked over to the door to go into the living room. He hoped Jake prepared something to eat while he was knocked out.

As he approached the closed door, he heard two voices outside in the living room. One was Jake's, and the other was a woman's… Was that Jane? It got quiet for a second after Jake said something, then the woman yelled as if she was scolding him, and Jake's deep voice just laughed in response.

Yeah, that was definitely his sister.

He opened the door and poked his head into the living room. Sure enough, Jake and Jane were sitting on the sofa, both of them turned around to look at him as they heard the door creak.

"Look who's awake," Jane chimed in a sing-song tone.

John just waved a hand as he stepped out of the bedroom. Jake chuckled as he leaned forward to get a better look at the boy.

"Sleep well?" He asked with a lopsided half-smile after exhaling the puff of smoke he held in, twirling his cigarette between his fingers. John nodded slightly in reply as he scratched the back of his head, his medium length hair entangling between his fingers, and Jake laughed at bit at his response. "Well I cooked some soup earlier if you're hungry. It's still hot on the stove so help yourself, little buddy."

John looked over to the kitchen area where a pot sat on the stove on the nook. "Thanks," he nodded again as he walked through the open archway into the kitchen. He shook his head a few times, trying to wake himself up as he still felt half asleep as he talked to the older two. "What are you doing here by the way, sis?"

Jane looked up from the papers scattered across the coffee table that she and Jake had been perusing over to John. She watched him grab a bowl from the cupboard and take the lid off the pot, and she giggled as he immediately jerked away when the steam poured out in round puffs and fogged up his glasses.

"Looking over the intel I collected on those drug dealers from that contract Jake got a few days ago," she replied.

John's face lit up at that as he took a soup spoon out of a drawer. "Oh, finally we get to get started on that! I knew Jake was waiting until I got out of school for the week."

It had been three days since he and Jake met with their lady client on chasing down the five members of the small drug cartel that claimed the life of her son and many other young teens. John had found it odd that he hadn't mentioned it since that meeting; and every time John would ask him about it, he'd just casually dodge the topic with something like "We'll see to it eventually, ol' bean!" or "One step at a time, lad!" He remembered that when he was still training and Jake would get contracts, he was rather speedy about getting the job done as soon as the paperwork was signed.

Jane just looked at him with a rather puzzled look as he ate his soup at the counter. "What do you mean?"

John blew softly at the hot liquid in his spoon before slurping it down. "You were out gathering the info on where to get them like my first hit, right? 'Cause I was wondering why it took so long for Jake to get started on it till now."

His sister furrowed her brow in confusion. "Wha…" Right then, it clicked in her head, and she rolled her eyes to Jake. "You didn't tell him?"

Jake sheepishly rubbed the back of his neck with one hand as he extinguished his finished cigarette into his ash tray. "I-I mean I  _was_  going to tell him—"

Before he could finish, Jane just groaned loudly as she slouched back into the sofa. " _Oh_  my God."

John cocked an eyebrow at the two, shifting his weight as he leaned against the counter and continued eating. "What?"

Jake cleared his throat slightly and leaned forward. He rested his chin against the backs of his hands with his elbows propped up on his knees. "Actually, John… I already took out two of those rogues over the past few days… And your ol' sister here's been helping me out."

The teen stared at him at that, his expression a mix of surprise and a bit of hurt. He was in the middle of raising his spoon filled with soup to his mouth, but he lowered it back into the bowl, trying to process what he had just heard. "…Wait, what?"

"I mean… Jane and I—"

"No, no," John shook his head as he walked out of the kitchen and towards them so that he stood in front of the pair across the coffee table. Jake and Jane could tell by his tone that he was quite upset, and they understood fully well why. "I know what you meant! But  _why?_  I thought  _I_ was your partner!"

"You are!" Jake quickly added, holding his hands out to motion for the boy to calm down. "Y-you are, my lad. But given how dangerous these boys are… I felt that maybe you should sit this one out and wait for the next one! The next contract, I promise! …Gentleman's promise!"

John just stared Jake down, who was looking up at him with an apologetic smile, his white teeth showing slightly. Jake could clearly see the suppressed anger in the teen's eyes, but it was evident that the boy was far more disappointed than angry.

"How will I gain experience if you won't even let me go out on the field with you!?" John snapped at him. Jake tried to maintain eye contact, though his smile just weakened even more until he had to look down at the carpet, unable to look at his young charge any further. John turned to Jane, who had been watching the two boys the whole time, and his shoulders fell as he made eye contact with his older sister. "…Sis?"

"I honestly have to agree with Jake on this one," Jane admitted, trying to sound as politely as she could. Being the boy's big sister, she knew how disappointed John always got as a kid when he asked if he could join her whenever she went out and she had to say no. Though they spent so much time together as kids, as she got older—and especially once she got involved in the hitman business—the time she spent with John became increasingly few and far between. She felt particularly guilty since she knew he didn't have very many friends growing up, and without her and their father always away on business, he was usually all alone in the house. She could only imagine what feelings of loneliness and exclusion this must have brought back for him.

"…Do you guys not trust me?" John quietly asked after a tense silence.

"Of course we trust you!" Jane quickly exclaimed as she shot up from her seat and hugged the teen. John just stood there without returning the gesture, though he didn't pull away from her either. "We just… We just want you to be safe is all."

"…Remember at the café during the meeting," Jake spoke slowly. Jane and John turned to him at that. "When I said that I've had experience with these kinds of characters?"

John nodded slightly in reply.

"I just know how dangerous these types can be," the older male shrugged. "I, uh… I grew up surrounded by baddies like them. And you remember how the dame's son was even younger than you? …I just don't want you ending up like that on my watch."

John's eyes fell to the ground as Jake spoke. Despite his feelings, he knew where Jane and Jake were coming from. Even then, they should have at least told him sooner! Maybe that way he'd at least be less hurt… He even felt a bit betrayed.

"…Fine," John breathed, gently wriggling out of Jane's arms. He walked back towards Jake's room; he felt their eyes watching him as he did so. "Thanks again for the food."

Without another word, he stepped into the bedroom and softly closed the door behind him.

As soon as the teen was gone, Jane turned back to Jake with a disapproving glare, who was silently giving her another apologetic smile in response. She just rolled her eyes and unfolded her arms, walking towards the sliding door to the balcony with an exasperated sigh.

* * *

_Vantas Catholic Children's Orphanage and Sanctuary, Gold Fortune District_   
_Friday, May 25—4:38 PM_

Twenty-three year old Kanaya Maryam tip-toed as silently as she could down the hallway that connected the kitchen with the dining hall of the orphanage she spent much of her free afternoons and evenings volunteering. Behind her crept a group of five of the orphans, each trying to stifle their giggles and wearing excited grins on their face. Occasionally, one of the resident priests or nuns would walk past them, and they would just exchange knowing smirks with Kanaya and shake their heads in amusement. They all knew Kanaya too well to know that what she and the children were up to could only end in a hilarious mess.

Kanaya eventually reached the edge of the large open archway that led to the kitchen. She felt the kids behind her bump into the back of her legs, and she whirled around to silently shush them with her index finger pressed to her glossed red lips.

"Shh!" She fought off a laugh as she bent over. Two of the kids just mimicked the action, holding their own fingers to their lips as they staved off their laughter.

Kanaya smiled warmly at the kids in reply, then turned around to peer over the wall as surreptitiously as she could. In the kitchen, some of the nuns were preparing dinner for the orphanage. Helping them out with the cooking was an eighteen year old Karkat Vantas.

"Karkat," Kanaya heard one of the nuns speak. She watched her adjust the rolled up sleeves of her black dress and hand Karkat a small plate with a stick of butter. "Can you start spreading butter on the bread there? I'm going to toast it into garlic rolls for the spaghetti."

"Yes, ma'am," Karkat nodded and set the butter on the counter. He quickly adjusted the knot on the back of his apron and reached for a butter knife on the rack of clean dishes. Kanaya couldn't help but giggle to herself watching him. Karkat was always so unbelievably polite and calm sounding when he talked to authority figures, especially the nuns and priests in the orphanage. But when it came to kids his age…

Without turning away from Karkat, Kanaya held out three fingers to the children behind her, preparing to silently count down for them to do their job. Three… Two… One… Go!

"GET HIIIM!" The kids all cried out at once.

Karkat and the nuns whirled around to see the children dashing from behind the wall towards the teen. He just froze, knife in hand and just about to reach for a slice of the baguette in front of him, unable to react quickly enough to defend himself from the kids' bum rush.

"W-what the—!?"

The words were barely out of his mouth when they all tackled his legs, their collective weight knocking down his small frame. He ungracefully staggered back onto his behind with a grunt, and the butter knife he was holding flew out of his grasp and onto the linoleum tiles. The resulting clattering sound echoing throughout the room, though the noise paled in comparison to the high pitched laughter of the children. The nuns just watched the scene with amusement and laughed, not even bothering to help the poor boy because they all knew fully well who was responsible for the attack.

"Karkat, come play wit' us!"

"Hey Karkat, why're ya wearin' such a girly apron!?"

"When's dinner ready, huh!? Huh!?"

Karkat helplessly tried to push the toddlers off him as they latched onto his upper legs and hugged his waist, tugging at his apron. "Ow! Hey, get off me! How many times did I tell you to quit doing that!? I was holding a knife; I could have—Ow! I could've hurt myself or one of you! Sisters, can you  _please_ help me!? KANAYA!"

Kanaya, who was still hiding behind the wall the whole time and trying to laugh as silently as she could, hurriedly gathered herself so that she looked as normal as possible and ran into the kitchen towards the tangled mess on the floor.

"Hey, hey!" Kanaya snapped as sternly as she could as she pulled the kids off of the teen one by one. "That's enough, get off your big brother!"

The nuns finally jumped in to help her—though not before shooting her quick knowing smirks—and dusted the kids off while Kanaya pulled Karkat up to his feet and brushed off his clothes. Karkat just scowled at the giggling children, glaring each of them down.

"What even possessed you all to attack me _again!?_ " He snapped at them. "I take care of you all, don't I!? You shouldn't even be allowed to eat tonight just because of that!"

"I got it," Kanaya patted him on the shoulder before pushing him back to the counter. He just huffed angrily, snatched his discarded knife off the floor, and walked over to the sink to wash it off. Kanaya turned back to the kids and used her disciplinary voice, making sure Karkat heard her without actually seeing.

"You all know better than to sneak up on your brother like that!" She reprimanded them, though she tried as hard as she could to not smile. "Apologize to him  _now!_ "

"Sorry big brother," they all spoke in unison in a remorseful sing-song voice, all of them trying to sound as sincere as they could. Karkat just barely looked over his shoulder from where he stood at the sink, not saying a word, before sharply turning back to washing his knife.

"Good. Now go back outside and wait for dinner!" Kanaya finished. She made sure he wasn't looking, and turned back to the kids with a proud grin, silently high fiving each of them as they ran out of the kitchen one by one.

"Thanks, sisters," she smiled at the women, and they all nodded and returned the expression before Kanaya walked back over to Karkat. She quickly regained her composure before standing next to him. "Are you upset?"

Almost immediately he opened his mouth to reply to curse, but he stopped himself once he remembered he was in the presence of the sisters. "Of  _course_  I'm upset! They  _always_ do that! And I was holding a knife this time!"

Kanaya just raised her eyebrow slightly at him, her lips curling into a smirk. "Karkat, please. It's a butter knife."

"A knife's a knife!" He slapped the faucet off and dried the knife off with his apron as he stormed back to the butter and bread, running a hand through his platinum blond locks in agitation.

Kanaya had been volunteering at the orphanage since she was 12, and she had just turned 23 a few months earlier. She met Karkat when she first started volunteering—he was just seven years old, and even then he was what she liked to call a little ball of albino fury: since he was quite short for his age; he was only five feet and three inches tall, and had been that height since at least his first year of high school (he was graduating in just a few weeks). Karkat always had a fuse shorter than most, and he always spoke with quite the abrasive tone and a few harsh words even when slightly irritated, but she knew behind his rough exterior he was a good kid.

When it came to helping around the orphanage, Karkat was the harsher disciplinary figure compared to Kanaya—who was much more lenient and calm in her handling with the kids—but his genuine well-meaning, concern and love for the orphans were here. Even though he was already eighteen and no longer legally bound to the orphanage's custody, he opted to stay and live with the kids so he could help the priests and nuns take care of them. She had even heard talks among the resident clergy of having Karkat inherit the orphanage if he wanted, since he was by far the oldest of the kids and had been living there the longest.

"…Kanaya, are you busy tonight?" He asked after a brief silence, his voice much more calm than it had been moments before.

She turned around to look at him and blinked for a second before walking over to where he stood. "No, why?"

"Do you think you can take over for me?" The blond asked again, though he pushed the knife he was holding into Kanaya's hand without waiting for an answer. "All you have to do is just butter the baguette slices 'cause the sisters are gonna make garlic bread."

"Y-yes, of course," she looked down at the utensil before turning back to Karkat, who was untying the apron and hanging it back on the wall with the others. "Are you okay, Karkat? You're not still upset about the kids—"

"I'm not mad anymore," he cut her off as he headed for the exit without looking back at her, his tone more nonchalant than she was used to.

Kanaya silently watched him leave the kitchen, her brow furrowing in confusion. What was that all about? She turned to the nuns to ask them what was wrong with him all of a sudden, but she withheld her question when she saw that they were just as confused as they were.

…

Karkat stared at his reflection in the mirror, studying his appearance. His albino complexion and nearly white-blond hair were in stark contrast with his vibrantly red pupils. His eye bags were also natural; he remembered when he was a kid that the other kids in the orphanage he grew up with and his classmates in school would make fun of his albinism and eye bags, but over the years he learned to grow a thick skin to such comments. His black necktie and pants and dark gray dress shirt muted his otherwise loud crimson, checkered waistcoat, which had long coattails trailing down to his mid-calves.

It was his usual outfit when he was carrying out his hit contracts. Unlike most hitmen, who usually had their outfits made with little meaning behind them other than for professionalism's sake, Karkat's was special: he had the waistcoat custom made to replicate a similar outfit he wore to a Christmas Eve mass his adoptive father—the head of the orphanage back then—gave in the orphanage's chapel when he was five.

Tonight, though, he wasn't wearing it for that kind of occasion; it was for something so much more important than that. There was just one more accessory left to complete the look.

Karkat reached for a small box on his dresser and opened the wooden lid. Inside was a golden pocket watch. Engraved on the cover was the zodiac symbol for cancer; both Karkat and his father were born as cancers. His father gave it to him as a birthday gift when he was a child.

He attached the clip to the hem of his waistcoat and tucked the watch into his left pants pocket. The blond looked over himself in the mirror once more before turning around to walk out of his room, softly closing the door behind him.

Karkat made his way down the stairs towards the front door, walking past the dining hall on his way. Inside the hall were all the priests and nuns eating with the orphanage's twenty children, all ranging in ages between five and sixteen. Joining them, as usual, was Kanaya.

"Karkat!" Kanaya called out as she saw him walk past the archway leading into the room. Karkat stopped in his tracks as soon as he heard his name and stepped into the hall. He nodded to the kids, and his lips curled into a slight smile as he acknowledged the priests and nuns.

"Where are you going, it's dinner time! We can't start praying without you!" She smiled, gesturing to the empty chair next to her where he usually sat during meals. Her smile quickly faded, though, when she took notice of his attire. Kanaya knew of his hitman dealings; she was, after all, a hitman herself—and they were both each other's partners for a time. None of the children or the clergy knew of their occupations, though; should they find out that both their oldest child and one of the orphanage's longest serving volunteers violated one of God's Ten Commandments by killing, much less for money… Well, it would be devastating to say the least.

"Oh…" She nodded slowly. "Do you have…"

"No," he shook his head, knowing fully well what she was trying to ask without actually saying the words. "I just have somewhere to be right now. I'll be back before dark."

Without another word, he walked out of the dining hall. Before long, everyone head the front door open, then close shortly thereafter. Kanaya just knit her brow as she stared at where Karkat had stood moments before. Karkat could be distant sometimes, but it wasn't like him to be so secretive about things. Just what had gotten into him tonight?

"Auntie Ka-nya-nya," one of the five year olds that had taken part in mauling Karkat earlier looked at her from across the table with a remorseful frown. "Is he still mad at us?"

Kanaya quickly regained her composure and giggled at how he struggled to correctly pronounce her name. "No, he's not mad anymore! You didn't do anything wrong, okay?"

As one of the nuns set the last serving platter of garlic bread on the table, Kanaya turned to her and motioned for her to come closer. "Sister… Do you know what's gotten into Karkat this evening?"

The elderly woman just smiled weakly as she wiped her hands on her apron. "…What is the date today, love?"

Kanaya looked up the ceiling in thought for a second, trying to remember. "…The 25th…" It was then that she remembered, and her eyes widened, horribly surprised at herself. Oh Lord, how could she have possibly forgotten!?

"Today's—" She started, but stopped herself when she remembered that the kids were at the table as well. Some of the older orphans, though, nodded silently when they overheard her; they were old enough to remember, after all.

"I'm sorry," Kanaya bowed her head deeply to the head priest, the current owner of the orphanage. "It's just… No one said anything all day."

"Karkat specifically requested that we don't," he replied, his deep baritone voice rumbling as he spoke. Deciding that it was better that the topic end there, he looked up to everyone and nodded. "Alright, everyone! Time to pray so we can all eat now."

Kanaya silently gestured the sign of the cross and folded her hands in her lap, bowing her head as the head priest said grace, though she wasn't paying any attention to his words; all she could think of then and throughout the dinner was Karkat.

* * *

_Terranos Cathedral and Cemetery of the Immaculate Conception, Gold Fortune District_   
_Friday, May 25—6:13 PM_

Karkat inserted the bouquet of flowers he had picked from the orphanage's garden into the flower pot that was built into the plaque before him. He squatted down on the grass into a ball, wrapping an arm around his legs while his other hand stroked the stone surface, tracing his fingers along the engraved letters.

The letters that spelled out the name of his father.

It had been ten years since his father died. Ten years since he was murdered. Ten years since the raid on his orphanage and the massacre of half of who, for as long as he could remember, had been his only family. Karkat remembered that day so vividly. How when he got home from school, he saw some of his brothers and sisters lying in the halls, bloodied, maimed and lifeless. How when he ran into the kitchen looking for his father, the monks and priests had already been shot and slashed, struggling in vain to cling to life. How in the chapel, as he hid in the confessional, his father was slowly tortured to death on the altar. He could still smell the freshly splattered blood. He could still hear his murderers slandering his faith and mocking his father's teachings and homilies.

Things like that people just didn't forget so easily, he supposed.

He reached into his pocket for his watch, and opened it to check the time. It was 6:24 PM.

… _12 Years Ago_ …

"I want you to have this pocket watch," his father knelt down before him, holding in his hand his golden pocket watch with some strange symbol on the cover.

A newly-turned six year old Karkat stared at it quietly before looking back up at his father, who was just beaming happily at him. "But that's yours."

His father just chuckled before taking the boy's hand and gently placing the watch in his small grasp and pushing his fingers closed around it. "And now, my son, it's yours."

Karkat just ran his small thumb along the gilded surface, while his free hand played with the gleaming chain.

"I use it to check the time," his father added. "And every time I do, I think of you."

Karkat looked up at him at that, and the older man pushed his son's unruly platinum fringes out of his red eyes. "And I hope that when you use it to check the time, you'll think of me."

His father took the chain's clip and attached it to the hem of Karkat's shirt and put the watch in his pocket. The weight sagged his pants down some, and his father just laughed at the sight. "It appears to be too big for you now, unfortunately! But I bet when you grow up to be a handsome young man, you'll wear it proudly. And I hope that you'll honor my request."

The boy cracked the slightest smile at that. He reached back into his pocket and pulled the watch out and opened the lid. He was still too young to tell the time, but already he was honoring his father's request.

"Thank you, Dad." Karkat nodded. His dad smiled as warmly as he could and wrapped his arms around him in a gentle embrace.

"You're welcome, Karkat. Happy birthday, my son."

…

"I thought you'd be here."

Karkat looked over his shoulder from his watch to face the source of the familiar, soft and feminine voice. Kanaya.

He looked at her for a second, not speaking a word, before turning forward to the plaque and stuffing his watch back into his pocket. Kanaya just watched him from where she stood a few yards away behind him. She tentatively walked over to her, looking for any signs that he wanted to be left alone. When she found none, she pooled her long, flowing skirt to her legs and knelt down so that she was sitting on her shins, right next to Karkat.

She watched him silently, trying to make eye contact with him. He just stared down at the grave marker before them, not even further acknowledging her presence.

"…I'm sorry I forgot about today," she finally spoke in a soft voice, tucking a few of her short dirty blonde tresses behind her ears. She felt genuinely terrible about how she forgot; she had been at the orphanage during the massacre. In fact, she had helped a few children survive by hiding out in the chapel confessional… including Karkat.

He stayed quiet for a few seconds. The nearby plum blossom tree rustled in the whistling breeze. A petal landed on top of Karkat's head, and Kanaya gingerly plucked it off without a word.

"It's okay," he murmured with a shrug. He adjusted himself as he got his wallet out of his back pocket and opened it. He reached into one of the pockets and pulled out an aged photograph. The surface of the film was slightly dirty and it was stained with a little bit of blood. It was the picture of him with his father after Christmas Eve mass when he was five years old. He was in a gray dress shirt with a black necktie and slacks. Together they muted his red checkered waistcoat with long coattails that reached the back of his shins. It was the photograph he showed the tailor when he had his hitman outfit created.

Kanaya leaned to the side to get a better look at the small photo in the teen's hand, and she couldn't help but smile sadly at it. She remembered how Karkat would always wear that waistcoat to every Christmas mass, even when, as he got older, it was clearly starting to become too small for him to wear properly.

"Are you…" She started, twiddling her thumbs in her lap. "Are you mad I forgot?"

He just stroked his thumb along the now worn surface of the film. It was a bit scratchy where the small splatters of dried blood covered parts of the picture. "No."

She scratched a bit at the polish on her nails. For as long as she's known him, Karkat wasn't typically the quiet type. She wasn't so used to him being so silent… so somber.

"…Do you want to talk about it?" She asked again. Karkat just shook his head ever so slightly. She studied him closely: he was starting to blink more frequently, like he was trying to keep from crying. Karkat was always a proud kid. He hated showing weakness in front of other people, especially in front of the children at the orphanage since he was the oldest of them. And especially in front of Kanaya.

"No," he whispered again.

Kanaya breathed softly at that. Out of everyone who survived the massacre, Karkat seemed the most deeply affected. It came as no surprise to her, though; he was within earshot of his father's torturing and death. She remembered she even tried to cover his eyes so he wouldn't be able to watch through the cracks in the door. She learned from the nuns when she began volunteering as a teenager that out of all the children, Father Vantas favored him the most. He was the only one out of all the orphans, after all, whom he formally adopted himself.

"Do you want me to leave?" She tilted her head to side so she could look at his face more properly. Suddenly she felt like she shouldn't have come and waited for him to just come home instead, like he didn't say where he was going because he didn't want her to follow.

Kanaya was just about to get up without waiting for his answer, but Karkat immediately grabbed her forearm. She turned to him, her eyes wide in surprise, only to make contact with his deep red pupils. His brow was knit tightly and she could see tears starting to pool at the edges of his eyes. The dark circles around his eyes seemed to be more irritated than usual, as if he had been crying before she came. She knew that his classmates in school would make fun of them when he was kid, but she always found them quite endearing.

"No," he spoke, his tone firm and commanding, though she could hear his voice shaking as he fought back his tears. Kanaya, as much of a mother figure as she had been to him for as long as they've known each other, was one of the people he hated crying in front of the most. She'd always been the nurturing, maternal figure to him and the orphans. He considered her more motherly than even the nuns who reared him when he was a baby.

Without hesitation, Kanaya pulled the blond forward and wrapped his arms around his neck. It was right then that Karkat's hard front fully cracked and weakened, and sobbing squeaks escaped him. She felt his tears wet her white blouse, but she didn't care. She just embraced him even tighter and pressed his cheek against her chest, but that only seemed to make him cry more. His body shook in her arms as he sniffled loudly, nuzzling the fabric of her sleeve to wipe the tears off his cheeks.

"Shhh…" She rubbed her hand up and down on his back, a silent tear running down her olive skin. "It's okay… You can cry."

Karkat grunted through his weeping at that and gently pounded his fist against her arm as if in protest. "I… I'm—I'm not crying."

She paid his contempt no attention. Instead, she hugged him even closely as he sobbed openly, his incoherent whining echoing through the whistling breeze and rustling of the nearby plum blossom tree.

* * *

_Egbert Residence, Gold Fortune District_   
_Friday, May 25—9:46 PM_

Later that evening, Jake drove Jane and John back to their penthouse. After he found out that he wouldn't be participating in the hit with Jake like he originally thought, John remained silent throughout the rest of the afternoon and car ride back. The older brunets understood his disappointment; it had been their—well, mostly Jake's—fault for not telling him sooner and getting his hopes up too high, and John understood their concern for his safety. Or at least, he just kept telling himself that he did.

The three walked through the front door; Jake and Jane decided to see the boy back to the house just to make sure he was all right. They watched him take his shoes off, Jane in particular eyeing him with curiosity.

"Are you sure you'll be okay?" She asked John. He took his uniform loafers in his hand and looked up at her with just the slightest smile.

"Yeah, I'm okay," he nodded, shrugging his shoulders with a bit of indifference.

Jake stepped forward some, nervously rubbing the back of his neck. "Ah, John, my boy… You're not still mad, are you?" Ever since John went back into Jake's room earlier that afternoon, the boy hadn't said a single word to him.

John turned to him, and shook his head. "…No, I'm not. Sorry I got so upset earlier."

Jake just chuckled and ruffled the teen's black locks. "No, you had every reason to. I should have manned up and told you sooner." He pulled John closer to him and pressed the side of his head to his chest, rubbing his shoulder comfortingly. "We'll get the next one, okay? Together, I promise."

John eyed the green fabric of his waistcoat from the corner of his eye and nodded slightly. "I know." He pat the back of the hand Jake used to rub his shoulder and slowly withdrew. "…Well, better head out soon, you know."

Jake nodded silently in agreement and opened the door for Jane. She just glanced to her former hit partner as he moved, and turned back John. Her brother was already halfway up the stairs on his way to his room. "We'll be back before midnight! Dad's out in the office and he won't be home until after one, he said."

"All right," John called from up the stairs, not turning back to face her. Jane frowned a bit at his response and watched him disappear down the hall, hearing his door open then close softly without another word from the boy. She just sighed sadly and was about to chase after him, but she felt Jake's hand stop her by gently squeezing her shoulder. She turned around to face him, and he was just giving her one of his winning smiles of encouragement.

"He'll be fine," he said with a nod. Jane returned the gesture, though she did so with not nearly as much confidence. Her eyes darted across the carpet with some hesitation before quietly walking out the door, getting her keys out to lock it as Jake closed it behind himself.

Upstairs, John hastily stripped himself of his school uniform and pushed through all his clothes neatly hanging in his closet for his hitman attire. He already had the gym duffle bag with his hammer inside, the head and the two-piece handle disassembled from each other so that it was more easily mobile and concealed in public. Padding the inside of the bag so that the hammer pieces didn't jostle too loudly were towels and blankets.

He quickly buttoned up his black dress shirt as he walked over to his desk for his phone and checked the photos he had taken that afternoon. While Jane and Jake were talking outside on the balcony back at Jake's apartment, John quickly snuck through their documents and took pictures of as many of the pages as he could get with his phone, intending on using the information to stalk the remaining drug dealers down himself.

John understood why Jake and Jane didn't want him to participate in the hit. At least, that's what he just kept telling himself.

Either way, just because he understood didn't mean he agreed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I intended for this chapter to include John's attempt to take out those three thugs on his own, but I didn't anticipate the scenes with Karkat and Kanaya taking so long so I shortened it right before then for pacing reasons aurklghaervlnaeroar BUT IT WILL SHOW UP FOR SURE IN CHAPTER FIVE. I'VE BEEN PUTTING IT OFF LONG ENOUGH.
> 
> As always feedback and constructive comments are always welcome. Thank you so much for sticking around with me thus far!


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